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JAN 10 1898 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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! UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

























































































































































































































































































































The^Good Things 
of Earth 

For Any Man Under the Sun 


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Qh~35rojS\ ) 



New York 

Arthur Gray & Co. 
1897 


'({ DE i 7 

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VW /: 





Y of Gopf 






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Copyright, 1897 

BY 

ARTHUR GRAY 


/£/ 


Contents 


My First Dress Coat,* 

Alphonse Daudet 

My Pipe, .... 

Julian Ralph . 

Cigars, .... 

A. B. Tucker 

Slippers, .... 

C. M. Skinner 

My First Latch-Key, . 

R. W. Criswell 

Razors, .... 

Frank R. Stockton 

Some Watches I Have Known, 

Ernest Jarrold r 

A Good Dinner, 

John Alden 

Bath-Robes and Bachelors, 

Arthur Brown 

The Chafing-Dish, 

Wm. E. S. Fales 


♦By kind permission of George Routledge & Sons, 
New York office. 





i 


My First Dress Coat 

By Alphonse Daudet 



OW did I come by it, that first dress 
coat ? What primitive tailor, what 
confiding tradesman was it, trust¬ 
ful as Don Juan’s famous Monsieur 
Dimanche, who, upon the faith of 
my fantastic promises, decided,one 
fine morning, on bringing it to me brand 
new and artistically pinned up in a square 
of shiny green calico ? It would be diffi¬ 
cult for me to tell. Of the honest tailor I 
can, indeed, recall nothing—so many tailors 
have since then crossed my path—save, 
perhaps, a vision, as in a luminous mist, of 
a thoughtful brow and a large mustache. 
The coat, indeed, is there before my eyes. 
Its image, after twenty years, still remains 
indelibly graven on my memory, as on im¬ 
perishable brass. What a collar, my young 
friends ! What lapels ! And, above all, 




4 


My First Dress Coat 


what skirts, shaped as the slimmest tail of 
the swallow ! My brother, a man of expe¬ 
rience, had said : “ One must have a dress 
coat if one wishes to make one’s way in the 
world.” And the dear fellow counted much 
on this piece of frippery for the advance¬ 
ment of my fame and fortune. 

This, my first dress coat, made its dibut 
at Augustine Brohan’s, and under what cir¬ 
cumstances worthy of being transmitted to 
posterity you shall now hear. 

My little volume had just made its ap¬ 
pearance, fresh and virginal, in rose-tinted 
cover. A few critics had noticed my 
rhymes. Even f Official had printed my 
name. I was a poet ; no longer hidden in 
a garret, but printed, published, and ex¬ 
posed for sale in the shop windows. I was 
astonished that the busy folk in the streets 
did not turn round to look at me as my 
eighteen years wandered along the pave¬ 
ment. I positively felt upon my forehead 
the pleasant pressure of a paper crown 
made up of flattering paragraphs culled 
from the papers. 

One day some one proposed to get me an 


My First Dress Coat 


5 


invitation to Augustine Brohan’s soirees. 
Who ? Some one. Some one, egad ! You 
know him already—that eternal some one 
who is like every one else ; that amiable in¬ 
stitution of Providence who, of no personal 
value in himself, and a mere acquaintance 
in the houses he frequents, yet goes every¬ 
where, introduces you everywhere, is the 
friend of a day, of an hour ; of whose name, 
even, you are ignorant—that essentially Pa¬ 
risian type. 

You may imagine with what enthusiasm 
I accepted the proposal. To be invited to 
Augustine’s house ! Augustine, the famous 
actress. Augustine, the laughing repre¬ 
sentative of Moliere’s comic muse, softened 
somewhat by the more poetic smile of 
Musset’s genius ; for while she acted the 
waiting-maids at the Theatre Franpais, 
Musset had written his comedy Louison at 
her house. Augustine Brohan, in short, in 
whom all Paris delighted, vaunting her wit, 
quoting her repartees, and who might al¬ 
ready be said to have adorned herself with 
that swallow’s plume, unsullied yet by ink, 
but already well sharpened, with which she 


6 


My First Dress Coat 


was hereafter to sign those charming Let- 
tres de Suzanne. 

“ Lucky dog! ” said my brother, helping 
me on with the coat; “ your fortune is 
made.” 

Nine o’clock was striking as I sallied 
forth. 

At that time Augustine Brohan was liv¬ 
ing in the rue Lord Byron, at the 
top of the Champs Elysees, 
one of those pretty coquettish 
little houses which seem to 
ignorant provincials the real¬ 
ization of the poetical dreams 
which they weave for them¬ 
selves from the pages of the 
novelist. A railing, a tiny garden, 
four steps covered by an awning, an 
entrance hall filled with flowers; and then, 
opening immediately from it, the drawing¬ 
room, a brilliantly lighted room in green, 
which I can now see vividly before me. 

How I managed to get up those steps, 
how I made my entry, and how I presented 
myself, I cannot now remember. A foot¬ 
man announced my name, but this name, 



My First Dress Coat 


7 


which he mumbled, produced no effect on 
the brilliant assembly. I can only recollect 
hearing a woman’s voice say : “ So much 
the better ; here is another dancer.” It 
appears they were short of dancers ; but 
what an entry for a poet! 

Startled and humiliated, I tried to lose 
myself among the crowd. How can I de¬ 
scribe my dismay when, a moment later, an¬ 
other mistake arose ? My long hair, my 
dark and sombre looks excited general cu¬ 
riosity. I heard them whispering near me : 
“ Who is it ? Do look ; ” and they laughed. 
At last some one said : 

“ It is the Wallachian prince.” 

“ The Wallachian prince ? Oh, yes ; very 
likely.” 

I suppose that a Wallachian prince had 
been expected that evening. My rank being 
thus settled for me, I was left in peace. 
But for all that, you cannot imagine how 
heavily my usurped crown weighed upon 
me all that evening. First a dancing man, 
then a Wallachian prince ! Could not these 
good people see my lyre ?***** 

At last comparative calm was restored 


8 


My First Dress Coat 


and the quadrille began. I danced. I 
was obliged to do so. I danced, moreover, 
somewhat badly for a Wallachian prince. 
The quadrille once ended, I became station¬ 
ary ; foolishly held back by my short sight 
—too shy to sport an eyeglass, too much of 
a poet to wear spectacles—and dreading 
lest, at the slightest movement, I should 
bruise my knee against the corner of some 
piece of furniture, or plunge my nose into 
the trimming of a bodice. Soon hunger 
and thirst interfered in the matter ; but for 
a kingdom I should never have dared to 
approach the buffet with all the rest of the 
world. I anxiously watched for the mo¬ 
ment when it should be deserted ; and, while 
waiting, I joined the groups of political 
talkers, and feigning to scorn the charms of 
the smaller salon , whence came to me, with 
the pleasant sound of laughter, and the 
tinkling of teaspoons against the porcelain, 
a delicate aroma of scented tea, of Spanish 
wines, and cakes. At last they came back 
to dance, and I gathered up my courage. 
I entered. I was alone. 

What a dazzling sight was that buffet! 


My First Dress Coat 


9 


A crystal pyramid under the blaze of the 
candles, brilliant with glasses and decanters, 
white and glittering as snow in sunshine ! 
I took up a glass as fragile as a flower, care¬ 
ful not to hold it too tightly lest I should 
break the stem. What should I pour into 
it ? Come, now, courage, I say to myself, 
since no one can see me. I stretched out 
my hand and took at haphazard a decanter. 
It must be kirsch, I thought, from its dia¬ 
mond clearness. Well, I’ll try a glass of 
kirsch ; I like its perfume, its bitter and wild 
perfume that reminds me of the forest. 
And so, like an epicure, I slowly poured 
out, drop by drop, the beautiful clear 
liquid. I raised the glass to my lips. Oh, 
horror ! it was only water. What a grimace 
I made. Suddenly a duet of laughter re¬ 
sounded from a black coat and a pink dre^s 
that I had not perceived flirting in a corner, 
and who were amused at my mistake. 

I endeavored to replace my glass, but I 
was nervous ; my hand shook, and my sleeve 
caught I know not what. One glass, two 
glasses, three glasses fell. I turned round, 
my wretched coat-tails swept a wild circle, 


10 


My First Dress Coat 


and the white pyramid crashed to the 
ground, with all the sparkling, splintering, 
flashing uproar of an iceberg breaking to 
pieces. 

At the noise of the catastrophe the mis¬ 
tress of the house rushes up. Luckily, she 
is as short-sighted as the Wallachian prince, 
and he is able to escape from the buffet 
without being recognized. All the same, 
my evening is spoiled. The massacre of 
small glasses and decanters weighs on my 
mind like a crime. My one idea is to get 
away. But the Dubois mamma, dazzled by 
my principality, catches hold of me, and will 
not allow me to leave till I have danced 
with her daughter, or, indeed, with both her 
daughters. I excuse myself as best I can. 
I escape from her and am stealing away, 
when a tall old man with a shrewd smile 
stopped my egress. It is Doctor Ricord, 
with whom I had exchanged a few words 
previously, and who, like the others, takes 
me for the Wallachian. “ But, Prince, as 
you are inhabiting the Hotel du S£nat, and 
as we are near neighbors, pray wait for me ; 
I can offer you a seat in my carriage.” 


My First Dress Coat 11 

How willingly would I accept, but I have 
no overcoat. What would Ricord think of 
a Wallachian prince without furs, and shiv¬ 
ering in his dress coat ? Let me escape 
quickly, and hurry home on foot through 
the snow and fog, sooner than allow my 
poverty to be seen. Always half blind, and 
more confused than ever, I reach the door 
and slip out, not, however, without getting 
somehow entangled in the tapestries. 
“Won’t Monsieur take his coat?” a foot¬ 
man calls after me. 

There I was, at two o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing, far from my home, alone on the streets, 
hungry and frozen, with the devil’s own 
self, a badly lined purse, in my pocket. But 
hunger inspired me with a brilliant idea : 
“ Suppose I go to the markets ! ” I had 
often heard of the markets, and of a certain 
Gaidras, whose establishment remained 
open all night, and where, for the sum of 
three sous, they provided a plateful of suc¬ 
culent cabbage soup. By Jove ! yes, to the 
markets I would go. I would sit at those 
tables like the veriest prowling vagabond. 
All my pride had vanished. The wind is 


12 


My First Dress Coat 


icy cold ; hunger makes me desperate. 
“ My kingdom for a horse,” said another 
prince, and I say to myself, as I trot along: 
“My principality, my Wallachian principality, 
for a basin of good soup in a warm corner.” 

Gaidras’s establishment looks a mere 
filthy hovel, all slimy and badly lighted, 
thrust back beneath the colonnades of the 
old market place. Often and often since 
then, when noctambulism was the fashion, 
have we future great men spent nights 
there, elbows on table, amidst tobacco 
smoke and literary talk. But at first, I 
must own, notwithstanding my hunger, I 
almost drew back at the sight of those 
blackened dingy walls, that dense smoke, 
those late sitters, snoring with their backs 
against the wall, or lapping up their soup 
like dogs ; the amazing caps of the Don 
Juans of the gutter, the enormous drab felt 
hats of the market porters, and the healthy 
rough blouse of the market gardener side by 
side with the greasy tatters of the prowler 
of the night. Nevertheless, I entered, and 
I may at once add that my black coat found 
its fellows. Black coats that own no great 


My First Dress Coat 


13 


coat are not rare in Paris after midnight in 
the winter, and they are hungry enough to 
eat three sous' worth of cabbage soup ! The 
cabbage soup was, however, exquisite ; full 
of perfume as a garden, and smoking like a 
crater. I had two helpings, although a cus¬ 
tom peculiar to the establishment—inspired 
by a wholesome distrust—of fastening the 
books and spoons with a chair to the table, 
hindered me a little. I paid, and fortified 
by the substantial mess, resumed my way 
to the Quartier Latin. 

What a picture that return home ! The 
return of the poet, trotting up the rue de 
Tournon with his coat collar turned up, 
while dancing before his sleepy eyes are 
the elegant shadows of a fashionable even¬ 
ing party mingling with the famished spec¬ 
ters of the market place. He stands knock¬ 
ing his boots against the curbstone of the 
Hotel au S6not, to shake off the snow, while, 
opposite, the bright lamps of a brougham 
light up the front of an old mansion, and 
Doctor Ricord’s coachman cries out: “Gate, 
if you please/’ Life in Paris is made up of 
these contrasts. 


14 


My First Dress Coat 


“A wasted evening!” said my brother the 
next morning. “You have been taken for 
■ a Wallachian Prince, and have not suc¬ 
ceeded in launching your book. But all is 
not yet lost ; you must make up for it 
when you make your ‘digestion call!’ as 
they say in Paris." 

The digestion of a glass of water, what 
irony ! It was quite two months before I 
made up my mind to make that call. How¬ 
ever, one day I summoned up courage. 
Besides her official receptions on Wednes¬ 
days, Augustine Brohan received more un¬ 
ceremoniously on Sunday afternoon. I 
resolutely started off. 

In Paris, a matinee that respects itself 
cannot decently begin till three or four 
o’clock in the afternoon. I, poor unsophis¬ 
ticated mortal, taking the word matinee lit¬ 
erally, arrived there at one o’clock, and 
thought myself already late. 

“ How early you come, sir V* said a fair¬ 
haired little boy of five or six years of age, 
who, dressed in an embroidered velvet suit, 
was riding a mechanical toy horse through 
the fresh spring greenery of the garden. 


My First Dress Coat 


15 


The young man impressed me ! I bowed 
to the fair curls, the horse, the velvet, the 
embroideries, and, too bashful to retrace 
my steps, I went in. Madame was not yet 
dressed, and I waited all alone for half an 
hour. At last Madame made her appear¬ 
ance ; screwing up her eyes, she recognized 
her Wallachian Prince ; then, by way of be¬ 
ginning the conversation, she said : “ You 
are not at La Marche , Prince." At La 
Marche , I, who had never seen a race nor a 
jockey! 

Really, I felt too much ashamed ! A sud¬ 
den throb rose from my heart to my brain ; 
and then the bright sun, the sweet perfume 
of spring wafted from the garden through 
the open casement, the absence of all cere¬ 
mony, the smiling and kind hearted little 
woman, all combined to encourage me, and 
I poured forth my whole heart. I told her 
all—confessed everything—how I was 
neither a Wallachian nor a prince, but a sim¬ 
ple poet ; and the adventure of my glass 
of kirsch and my supper at the markets, 
and my wretched return home, and my pro¬ 
vincial timidity, and my short sight and 


16 My First Dress Coat 

my aspirations, all seasoned by the accent 
of my Southern province. Augustine 
Brohan laughed heartily. Suddenly a bell 
rang. 

“ Ah ! my dragoons,” she exclaimed. 

“ What dragoons ?” 

“ Two dragoons they are sending me 
from the camp at Chalons, and who, it ap¬ 
pears, have a wonderful taste for acting.” 

I wished to take leave. 

“ No, no, stay ; we are going to rehearse 
Lait d'dnesse , and you shall help me with 
your criticisms. Sit down by me on the 
sofa !” 

Two huge fellows came in, shy, awkward, 
tightly belted, purple in the face (one of 
them acts somewhere at the present day) 
A folding screen is arranged. I settle my¬ 
self and the representation begins. 

“ They do not act so badly,” said Augus¬ 
tine Brohan, in a low tone. “ But what 
boots ! My dear critic, do you smell those 
boots ?” 

To be on intimate terms with the wittiest 
actress in Paris raised me to the seventh 
heaven. I threw myself back on the sofa, 


My First Dress Coat 


17 


nodding my head and smiling in a capable 
manner. I was positively intoxicated with 
delight. 

Even now I can recall the smallest de¬ 
tails of that interview. But see how all 
depends upon our point of view. I had 
told Sarcey the comical story of my first 
appearance in society, and one day Sarcey 
repeated it to Augustine Brohan. Well, 
the ungrateful Augustine—whom it is true 
I have not seen for thirty years—swore 
most sincerely that she knew nothing of 
me but my books. She had forgotten 
everything ! Everything—all that had 
played such an important part in my life— 
the broken glasses, the Wallachian Prince, 
the rehearsal of Lait d'dnesse and the boots 
of the heavy dragoons. 







































































































































































































































































































































































































MY PIPE 






































































My Pipe 

By Julian Ralph 


H as I love the wild woods, I 
cannot think of them without, at 
the same time, centring all their 
scenes and sounds and savors 
around my brier pipe. How often, 
when I have been springing noise¬ 
lessly over the soft bedding of dead leaves 
and moss, toward my camp, drinking in the 
balsamic air, hearing the soft sighs of the 
breeze far above me in the tree-tops, mar¬ 
velling at the splintered yellow rays with 
which, like a shower of gold, the sun has 
forced its broken way through the foliage 
—how often, I say, have I felt that I could 
not be happier, until there has come to meet 
me from the camp a whiff of the pipe-smoke 
of my guide. How it blends with the aro¬ 
matic exhalations of the camp-fire, with the 
breath of the pines, with the faint scents of 



22 


My Pipe 


the wild flowers and the sweet damp smell 
of the rotting wood and the leaf-layers on 
the earth. How gladly a pipe seems to 
return to the scenes of its origin, to the 
woods, where the red men smoked their 
kinnickanick of dried and crumbled leaves 
in their bowls of sacred redstone. At the 
first scent my steps involuntarily quicken, 
and I hasten to the tent or log cabin, where 
my pouch hangs with my briarwood in it. 
“Now,” I say to myself, “I will have all 
that was needed to perfect the joy of all my 
senses. I will smoke—and such tobacco, 
that even the birds and the rabbits, and 
squirrels, and, mayhap, the timider deer, will 
halt and bless the moment that they strayed 
where the aroma drifts and adds a new 
pleasure to the joys of the aromatic forest.” 

To sit, pipe in mouth, before the crack¬ 
ling fire, after a day’s hunting has ended, 
with an exquisite meal of fried fish and 
bacon, and stewed tomatoes ; when the 
darkness is upon the ground beyond the 
circle of fire-light, when only a faint relic 
of daylight is seen in the openings over¬ 
head, when the tattooing of the woodpeckers 


My Pipe 


23 


has ceased; and only nowand then is heard 
the last good night chirp of a cricket or a 
tree-toad—ah, then the little clouds of to¬ 
bacco-smoke ascend from grateful, happy 
smokers like thanksgivings. Then their 
shapes and the vague forms of the guides 
attending to the bedding and the boats, 
and the shadows of the bushes and the 
tree-trunks all become dreamy and whim¬ 
sical, and the time has come for listening 
to the recollections of other days in 
other woods, of friends who have before¬ 
times sat in the same charmed circle ; for 
questioning the half-breed guides, who 
drop down beside the embers, and tell their 
strange beliefs and superstitions in gut¬ 
tural English, musically mis-spoken. 

To sit in a canoe in the center of a great 
bowl of emerald water with its sides made 
of the deeper green of forest spires, in the 
silence of the heart of Nature, rod in hand 
and pipe in mouth—who that has tasted 
that bliss will deny the part which the pipe 
plays in perfecting its charms. There per¬ 
fect conditions are crystallized, mesmer¬ 
ized ; nothing stirs except our imperfect 


24 


My Pipe 


and impatient selves : and the pipe smoke, 
which floats softly upward to meet the 
flossy clouds that lie above, halted, as if 
drinking in the beauty of their images re¬ 
flected on the plated surface of the lake. 
Perhaps an owl hoots, possibly a muskrat 
propels its tiny nose in the loop of a silent, 

spreading ripple near the shore and- 

“ s-s-h ! whisper ; deer ! There, that streak 
of red in yonder bushes. Quick ! he’s 
smelled us—gone.” Bother take the deer for 
showing himself when we are fishing—but 
the pipes go back to our mouths and the 
smoke curls up again, even if the fish do not 
bite. How patient and philosophic one is 
when the fish do not bite, if one has a pipe. 
Indeed, given the pipe and the woods, 
what need is there of aught else, now that 
canned food is so portable and satisfactory ? 
A philosopher friend of mine has said that 
“ ‘ going fishing ’ is the most elastic phrase 
in the English tongue. It means what it 
says, or it means going loafing, or going 
carousing, or dodging trouble at home—a 
score of things.” Yes, among them, it 
means going off to enjoy one’s pipe. 



My Pipe 


25 


I remember one evening beside the brawl¬ 
ing Kootenai, in British Columbia, a civil 
engineer dropped into narrative as we sat 
till ten o’clock at night still catching trout 
as if the daylight were not two hours old in 
China. “It was in Montana,” said he, “in 
the fifties, when Red Callahan, the man who 
was hanged by the Vigilantes afterward, 
held me up and tried to murder 
me. That was my narrowest 
escape. He shot my pipe out 
of my mouth. He was an ornery 
fellow—didn’t play fair. He am¬ 
bushed me, thinking I had quit 
mining and was going East with 
plenty of dust, whereas I was in 
hard luck, without gold enough 
to weigh out the price of a dance at the 
cheapest hurdy-gurdy in Virginia City. He 
fired and I flung my hands up and called 
out: ‘ Quit that. What d’ye want ? ’ He fired 
again and missed, and then I was mad and 
showered lead where I saw his fire come 
from. In another six seconds I spurred my 
cayuse and got away. That was the worst 
trouble I ever got in. I was frost-bitten 



26 


My Pipe 


and out of my mind three days later— 
picked up stark crazy in the mountains by 
some prospectors, but I didn’t count that. 
The scrimmage with Red Callahan was 
much more serious.” 

“ Why ?” 

“ Why ? Didn’t I tell you he shot away 
my pipe ? It was the only one I had ; that’s 
why.” 

How little do the ignorant count the cost 
of idly spoken words! Back again at 
home, after that week of dreaming in the 
British Columbian bush—the grandest 
woods in America—she whom I reverence 
was unpacking my trunk and came upon 
my briar. “ Why !” she exclaimed, “ here’s 
a nasty pipe among your clothes.” A nasty 
—but I will not shock the reader with a 
repetition of the phrase. The red Indian 
who invented that wizard instrument, the 
calumet, rated it so truly at its worth that 
not only was the material of which it was 
fashioned sanctified in his sight, but those 
who carried it in blocks to the various 
tribes and who went through hostile na¬ 
tions to secure it, all bore sacred, charmed 


My Pipe 


27 


lives. The soft, fine-grained, red sand¬ 
stone was, and is to-day, found in Minne¬ 
sota only, and in but one small region 
there, if I am not misinformed. To that 
quarry all the red tribes of our country and 
Canada used to send occasional deputations 
of brave and distinguished youths to fetch 
back stone for the skillful and tasteful 
squaws to make pipes from in the winter 
months. These men were never harmed 
by any Indian of any nation, going or com¬ 
ing. Though they passed through the 
lands of ancient enemies and over the 
hunting ground of tribes with which their 
people were then at war, their lives were 
inviolate. Such was the agreement of all 
the Indians, although no other influence 
had ever been known to bring about such 
concord or any promise of safety to any 
foe or stranger otherwise employed. The 
pipe was to them all the sign-manual of 
peace and the emblem of deep wisdom. It 
was a thing to be smoked only among 
friends, the seal for the stamping of friend¬ 
ships, the vial that held the essence of 
philosophy and sage reflection, to be hand- 


28 


My Pipe 


ed around at the councils, passing from 
chief to chief and from valiant warrior to 
cunning medicine-man. “ Nasty P No, 
it was the portable altar whereon was 
burned the elemental fire, the sign and tool 
of the gods who also smoked—as any but 
the blind could see by looking at volcanoes, 
at geysers, at the forest fires lighted by 
celestial bolts from the smitten flints that 
hang from Gitche-Manitou’s belt. 

The red discoverer of the aromatic weed 
and of the implement he fashioned for its 
use had never a doubt of its power to call 
down peace from Heaven and understand¬ 
ing to men’s dull brains. And when a white 
man brought it from America to Europe 
to gladden his race, what new testimony of 
its magic power did it give forth ? For 
whether its magic was in the selection of 
Raleigh to be its sponsor, or whether it 
had to do with making Raleigh what he 
was—one or the other, the triumph was the 
same. He was, except Elizabeth, the most 
interesting figure of his time ; splendid in 
his loyalty to his queen, great in his energy, 
valor and wisdom, marvelous in the patience 


My Pipe 


29 


with which he bore adversity, and without 
a peer in gallantry. There is no better 
life to read through the smoke of a pipe 
than Raleigh’s, with its excitement, ad¬ 
ventures, and glad and fell vicissitudes. 
His life contained enough of poetry, ro¬ 
mance and sentiment, of moral weakness, 
for which he atoned with kindness and gen¬ 
erosity ; enough of all that is human 
blended with the rest, to be softened and 
dreamified into a wonderful tale as seen 
through the smoke which he was the first 
to let loose in Europe. 

Our women—loveliest of the benefactions 
of life—do not appreciate the pipe. They 
have not risen to the heights of its attrac¬ 
tions. Perhaps the majority of them are 
jealous of all the forms in which men use 
the weed—his surest solace and, in that 
sense, woman’s greatest rival. The “ new 
woman ” is coquetting with the cigarette—a 
mistake in taste ; and so is the new woman 
herself, by the way. If she has taken up 
the cigarette as the first step towards the 
pipe—but no, the cigarette is not of the 
genus tobacco ; it is a concoction, a drug- 


30 


My Pipe 


gists’ prescription, an odorous, odious, 
nerve-destroying, not nerve-soothing, thing. 
Do I blame either woman—the dear old 
kind or the dubious new sort—for not smok¬ 
ing? Could I love woman with a pipe in 
her mouth ? Aye, and millions of men no 
less refined and dainty and poetic than we 
of the West do already love woman thus 
accoutred. In Japan and in China every 
woman smokes—be she empress, duchess, 
farmer’s wife or poultry tender. Upon the 
women’s pipes are lavished the daintiest 
taste and skilfullest work of the artists of 
those realms. Some are of solid silver, in¬ 
laid with gold ; others are of ivory, beauti¬ 
fully carved. Each pipe holds but a pea 
of tobacco, and the emptying of it occu¬ 
pies but a minute. Dear reader, you would 
not deny that my friend Mrs. Ladaka is a 
lady. If you are masculine, you admire 
her; if a lady, you would envy her her 
amiability, her pretty ways, her beautiful 
silken suits. Yet many a time has Madame 
Ladaka come where I was smoking, aboard 
ship, in shops and in houses, and taken from 
her pouch her little pipe of silver, carved 


My Pipe 


3i 


and inlaid, and sent the smoke from it, 
joined with the smoke from mine, in spiral 
clouds up to the sky or roof. A pinch of 
fine hair-like tobacco, a pressure upon it 
over the pipe bowl, a scratch of a wax 
match, and then three quick puffs. That 
was all of her smoking. But how pretty she 
looked, how graceful were her postures, 
how poetic the movements of her arms dur¬ 
ing that minute ! How sweetly she smiled 
when I handed a match to her, and how 
calm and wise her face grew as she sucked 
up the three mouthfuls of smoke and let 
them curl away from between her teeth. 
May I meet you and smoke with you again, 
and when I do may you know that the 
smoke of my pipe is in reality incense 
offered at the altar of virtuous womanhood. 






























































































































SLIPPERS 




































Slippers 

By Charles M. Skinner 


WONDER if the youth of our day make 
the acquaintance of slippers as early 
in life as their fathers did. Some of 
them ought to. Slippers in the hand 
of authority are as greatly to be re¬ 
spected as policemen’s billies, or in¬ 
junctions. I ought, by reason of 
want of years, to have sympathized 
with the sufferings of the boy next 
door, when I was a boy next door to 
him, and the reports he gave of the 
way his mother treated him whenever 
he stole, or swore, or told lies, were 
moving; but he was a pretty bad boy, 
and he got nothing but what he needed. 

Slippers serve other turns than those of 
comfort and correction—oddly opposite 
functions, when you think about them. I 
know a traveling man, for example, who 




36 


Slippers 


carries his tooth brush, hair brush, comb, 
razor, and soap in his slippers, properly 
wrapped in paper, to be sure, and I have 
heard of people who wore money in them. 
In the “ hold-up ” of a Western train, one 
passenger saved his “wad” by slipping it 
into his slippers. 

It is, however, of the more common use 
of these articles that I intended to speak. 
The claw hammer coat represents the top 
of civilization ; it suggests the monotonous 
uniformity of society, the conventionality 
of town life, its intolerable sobriety of color; 
so we barbarians, who wear it only at the 
opera, groan in its embrace, and think of 
jacket and slippers. Sometimes you find a 
middle-aged or elderly man who likes it, or 
says he does, and will wear it in his own 
house without the excuse or stimulus of 
company. But the free soul has a pity for 
that man. Youth, which is strong, willing 
to sacrifice its likings for appearance sake, 
prides itself on its form and grace—it is for 
youth that the dress coat was created. 
When one begins to think for himself the 
proof of independence comes out on his 


Slippers 


37 


feet: slippers. We are subtly affected by 
our environment. Haydn, you know, wore 
his court costume, sword and all, when he 
was about to compose; Wagner, whose 
music has more freedom and color than 
Haydn’s, wore marvelous flowered dressing 
gowns ; and who was that general who put 
on full regalia when he planned a campaign? 
Against that kind of a soldier we could 
successfully oppose a Grant, a leader who 
fought in fatigue uniform. 

We are all influenced by these things. 
We kick off care with our shoes, and clothe 
ourselves in comfort and content as we 
shuffle into our slippers. Your stiff and 
stately citizen as naturally turns to the in¬ 
durated tile, the linen shirt with tin bosom, 
collar and cuffs, the tight, hard boots, the 
clothing that is a system of cylinders, as he 
turns to dignity in talk, to studied manner 
in his walk, to solemn self-approbation in 
the review of his conduct. The more nat¬ 
ural man expresses himself in clothes that 
fit him too much, in hats with unauthorized 
curves and dents, in neglig£ shirts, in duds 
that bring him to disesteem in those fash- 


38 


Slippers 


ionable circles in which he does not move. 
I have seen Indians who wore necklaces 
made from the tops of tomato cans, but, 
with those exceptions, the natural man sel¬ 
dom has any hard clothing on his person— 
nor any other kind, if he is entirely natural. 
Suppose a Patagonian in a plug hat, patent 
leathers and a corset. Hapless wretch ! 
Send a missionary to him. For by that 
time his appetite will be grown so dainty 
that he will need missionaries. 

Slippers mean home, and home means the 
natural man. There he drops the disguise 
that he wears at the office, at the club, at 
the dinner some other man is paying for, 
and allows his pent individuality to come 
out and play around the house. Sometimes 
it does not play, but the poor thing is his 
own, and he likes it, and we can endure 
much from a human being to know him as 
he is. So, to know him, never talk with 
him in his swallow tail : get him into a 
corner of his own house, just after dinner, 
let him hide behind a good cigar, put his 
hands in his pockets, and spread his slip¬ 
pered feet over as much of the floor as he 


Slippers 


39 


pleases ; then he is likely to tell you what 
sort of fellow he is. 

Home without slippers is a contradiction 
in terms. In the tender years of boyhood, 
when we go wrong in our morals and are 
detected, in company with the snub-nosed 
lad on the next block, tying very dead fish 
to the door knobs of elderly and irascible 
neighbors, it is the slipper that brings us 
back to the path of rectitude. And when 
we are old and crotchety ourselves, it is 
the ease of slippers that makes us a little 
less elderly, a good deal less irritable than 
we would be in boots. Slippers are just 
that compromise between savagery and 
convention that makes them feasible for 
everybody. The rich shed affectation for 
them ; the impoverished take on refine¬ 
ment with them. I climbed one of the White 
mountains with a clergyman who wore 
them, and I believe they were embroidered 
with roses—gifts from a parishioner, in 
that case. Wonderfully easy, they seemed 
to be, and they never came off, all the way 
to the stony summit. In the woods I shed 
my brogans and wear moccasins, the best 


40 


Slippers 


of slippers ; and standing in them, I better 
know the sly and feral nature of the savage 
and the brute that roam the hills than I 
can with town made coverings on my feet. 
I am nearer to earth and its springs of life. 

And tender sentiments sometimes asso¬ 
ciate with our easy shoes. I recall the tale 
of the artist who, looking from the window 
of his poor studio, up near the stars, saw, 
in a window across the way, a fair, sad face. 
It haunted him, and he watched to see it 
again. Meanwhile a song came out on the 
evening—a song in a voice low, but won¬ 
derfully sweet, and he instinctively asso¬ 
ciated the music with the face. His guess 
was right, for as the singing ceased, the 
face reappeared at the window, and the 
eyes of the two met, for a moment. The 
girl dropped hers, with a pretty blush, and 
retired into the darkness again, but that 
glance was enough. Artists are impres¬ 
sionable. He loved her. After the lamps 
were lighted he scratched together a few 
coins, hurried to a florist’s, spent his all for 
flowers and went back to his studio. And 
now the problem offered : how to get the 


Slippers 


4i 


bouquet to her, without impudence or im¬ 
prudence. Ha ! An inspiration ! He thrust 
the stems into one of his slippers and tied 
them in. Hush ! She is singing again. As 
the last note is reached he leans far out, 
aims carefully and throws his offering. He 
has succeeded. The bouquet—and the 
slipper fly through the tall window. He 
hears a little shriek; then the face is seen 
looking curiously about the street. Again 
their eyes meet, and this time it is the 
artist who blushes. The singer gives a 
merry little laugh, pulls a rose from the 
cluster and puts it in her hair. Suffice for 
the present that the two were speedily ac¬ 
quainted, that they became lovers, but that, 
both being poor, they drifted away from 
the great city and after some years lost 
sight of one another—but not the memory. 

One night the artist, now prosperous, 
and no longer in the flush of youth, at¬ 
tended the opera. A new prima donna 
was to appear that night. As she swept 
upon the stage, shining in silk and jewels, 
he started violently and looked at his pro¬ 
gramme. No, he did not recognize the 


42 


Slippers 


name ; but it suddenly occurred to him 
that people sometimes change their names 
when they sing or act. And now the lips 
parted and the voice swelled through the 
great theater. A thrill went into his heart 
and a vast love repossessed him. It was 
she. Her voice, as sweet as ever, was now 
strong, commanding; her beauty was more 
radiant; her manner had more grace. He 


]aA applause when the solo 



had ended, and the 
curtain had hardly 


fallen on the first act 
b e f ore h e rushed from 


the building and into the street. He bought 
a clump of lily of the valley at a florist’s, and 
at a neighboring shop he bought a pair of 
slippers. Tossing one of the pair upon the 
floor, to the astonishment of the clerk, he 
put the flowers into the other and hurried 
back to the theater. Again the woman ap¬ 
peared, and the audience sat spellbound 
through her song. As it ceased, the artist 
tossed the slipper, with its flowers, to her 
feet. She picked it up, turned pale, and, 
for some seconds, forgot to smile. The 


Slippers 


43 


roar of smiting palms, the shouts of 
“ Bravo !*’ were unheard. She was back 
in that other city ; she loved and she was 
loved. Then, impulsively, she kissed the 
slipper and kissed her hand to the audi¬ 
ence. The artist knew for whom that kiss 
was meant, and for the rest of that evening 
he hardly heard the music ; he was su¬ 
premely happy. Well, I have told enough, 
but the tale had the right ending, of 
course. 

And now, the sun is down. Another 
day’s work is done. If it is not, be sorry ; 
for you shall wear your slippers with a dif¬ 
ference. None can know ease but him 
who has earned it. The walk home has 
been through slush and snow—freezing, 
here and there, for the wind is coming up. 
City noises are harsh and persistent, and 
they nag you constantly with reminders— 
the letters you failed to write, the chance 
you forgot to take, the bill you could not 
pay. Faugh ! Leave all that on the door¬ 
step and bolt the door when you have en¬ 
tered. A slight odor of preparing dinner 
comes up. The children are heard romp- 


44 


Slippers 


ing in the library. You throw off hat, coat 
and shoes, slide into your house jacket 
and enter the living room. She is there. 
Kiss her and clasp her hand, put on the 
slippers that she has put before the grate 
to warm, drop into the easy chair and 
thank God, for this is home. I am credi¬ 
bly informed that some persons dress for 
dinner when they are to meet their wives 
and children ; and that means—boots. I 
am also aware that I write myself down 
herewith as an anarchist from beyond the 
pale when I say that I’ll be switched if I’ll 
dine at my own table in a stage crown and 
Wellingtons, unless I have in some people 
of influence to see me do it. Why should 
I ? Do I wish to teach to my wife and 
children a lesson in martyrdom ? I don’t 
wish them to be martyrs. Do I want to 
show my respect for the servant ? Not a 
bit, for she won’t show any for me. Do I 
want to impress the neighbors? Not 
much! For I hold that man to be no 
better or wiser than he should who leaves 
his curtains up after gas-light, and exhibits 
himself at his meals or other occupations 


Slippers 


45 


to the passer-by. So, I fit myself to my 
state in life, and dismiss forms, that mean 
nothing, except to people who have noth¬ 
ing better to think about than forms. 

Truly, that man who has not come to 
slippers is to be pitied. Think what you 
can do in them : you can drop them off 
when it is warm ; you can put your feet 
near the grate when the day is cold, and 
toast them the quicker, for that they have 
thin soles ; if your wife is out you can put 
your feet on the mantelpiece, as you must 
not do in shoes ; you can move about your 
premises without tearing your carpets ; 
(the Orientals are never guilty of our bar¬ 
barity to rugs—those works of art that cost 
them months and years of loving toil ;) 
and, whether a veaiy youth, much grown to 
feet, or a lean and slippered pantaloon, you 
can rejoice in the sense of independence, 
of relief from constraint, that comes with 
deliverance from your shoes. In a pedes¬ 
trian party that tramped through the White 
hills, and became nobly crippled after try¬ 
ing conclusions with Mount Washington, 
two of the men carried slippers in their 


46 


Slippers 


packs all day, that they might wear them 
for half an hour when they played euchre 
in our tavern rooms at night. That was 
carrying things pretty far—about 130 miles 
—but the principle was correct enough. 

The place of all places where the right 
to wear slippers is sacred is your den—shop, 
study, smoking-room, or what not—at night. 
We can refuse to believe that any man gets 
the good out of his books, if he reads 
them in buttoned shoes. How can a mind 
be receptive, if the body that holds it is in 
discomfort, or on parade ? There be voh 
umes that naturally associate themselves 
with ease and liberty : the chats of our be¬ 
loved Autocrat, the pranks of Lamb, the 
Western yarns of Mark Twain, still un¬ 
matched in Americanism, and in their 
kind ; and, as to other matters, essays, 
histories, whatever one reads in order to 
improve his mind, we must study them in 
slippers, in order to gain that singleness 
and concentration of thought that are 
needed in all serious effort. In the writ¬ 
ing of those things, light or heavy, I war¬ 
rant that the feet of the great were 


Slippers 


47 


unburdened with corns and bunions, prod¬ 
ucts of shoes, and that they could wriggle 
their toes as they poured fine thoughts 
upon the paper. Homer wrote the Iliad in 
slippers, and the kings who were kings, 
namely, those in the later middle ages, 
went softly shod, that they might take con¬ 
spirators unaware, most likely. The only 
later writer whose work sounds as if it had 
not been done in slippers is Walt Whitman. 
He must have gone barefoot. How is it 
possible to get the flavor of a good novel, 
save in lounging costume, and who would 
read Emerson in raw hide larrigans ? It 
would insult the author to do that. 

Slippers are the furniture of the home. 
The very name suggests quiet evenings, 
secure against business and unwelcome 
company ; it suggests the cheery hearth, 
the bubbling urn, the romp with the little 
ones, the twilight stories, the half-hour of 
music, the favorite chair, the evening paper, 
after that, the friendly book, perhaps the 
pot of chilled beer and the pipe. 

Wearing slippers, you are content. Gales 
may roar without, millions may be lost or 


48 


Slippers 


won, churches may stagger under infidel 
assault, empires may rise and fall beyond 
the sea,—what odds? Your lamp burns 
clear, your loved ones are about you, you 
are protected by your four walls from all 
that is unsanctified. Slippers stand for the 
free, the unconventional, the fond, the fine. 
Shall we not look to see the abolition, at 
least, within doors, of boots, and the adop¬ 
tion of all the comforts and virtues to 
which a free people is entitled, when it 
wears slippers ? 



THE RAZOR 













The Razor 

By Frank R. Stockton 



HERE can be no good 
reason for the very 
general fashion of 
shaving the face ex¬ 
cept it be the vanity 
of man. It is so un¬ 
necessary to remove 


the beard, and it is often of such advan¬ 
tage to retain it, and, moreover, it is so 
difficult to get rid of it, that a strong 
motive was required for the persistent 
habit of shaving among those who in¬ 
stituted this ceaseless war against the 
processes of nature. 

Without doubt it was the young man 
who first used the razor, or whatever scrap¬ 
ing or cutting tool that preceded it,—for of 
all created beings, the young man possesses 


52 


The Razor 


the most vanity. When his fair and ruddy 
cheeks, as smooth as those of a maiden, 
began to be covered with a sort of hir¬ 
sute turf—here a little hair, there a little, 
and in some places none at all—resem¬ 
bling a badly seeded lawn, the youth might 
well have said to himself, that, although 
he was beginning to show the strength of 
a man he was losing the beauty which he 
shared with woman, and he knew well that, 
let him wait as patiently as he might, it 
would be a long, long time before his 
countenance could be clothed with the 
full dignity of the manly beard. 

But the man of middle age is also vain, 
although in less degree than the youth, and 
when he found that nature had not given 
him a worthy hairy covering for his face— 
and there are but comparatively few to 
whom she grants this boon—he disdained 
the inferior gift and forthwith shaved. 
Thus, by degrees, the custom of shaving 
grew among civilized men, until at last it 
became the fashion, and then it was estab¬ 
lished upon the earth, as firmly rooted as a 
rock or mountain. 


The Razor 


53 


But, although shaving originated in van¬ 
ity, and has for the most part been con¬ 
tinued in obedience to the behests of un¬ 
reasoning fashion, we must deal with it 
justly, and give it credit for whatever good 
it has brought to hard-worked and intensi¬ 
fied humanity. 

As an instance of this good, may be men¬ 
tioned the beneficial effects of shaving 
upon the brain-worker who, himself, uses 
the brush and razor. When tired with 
mental labor, the nerves of his head 
wearied from excited action, his mental 
machinery calls for rest. It may seem 
easy enough for him to stop working and 
thinking, but this is often impossible. The 
mind in action is like a bird upon the wing; 
if it be weary, it cannot stop in mid-air, it 
must rest somewhere. If the brain-worker 
be not so happily constituted that he can 
call up slumber whenever he chooses to 
stretch himself out for a nap, he must do 
something else when he stops the work that 
has tired his brain. It often happens that 
he cannot take physical exercise, for his 
mind demands a quiet condition of his 


54 


The Razor 


whole organism. He cannot read, he can¬ 
not talk, because these mental exercises 
might interest him, and thereby occasion 
loss of nerve-power. He may sit quietly, 
determined to do nothing ; but if he does 
that he is bound to think—there is no help 
for him—and his thoughts will soon become 
interesting and his mind will work. 

Now, a man in such a case can do nothing 
better than to go and shave himself. Here 
is an exercise which will keep his mind 
from wandering and will give it rest. It 
is absolutely necessary while the keen razor 
is gliding over the irregularities of his 
cheeks and chin that he should keep his 
mind upon that razor, for otherwise he 
might grievously cut himself. He must 
not give a thought to his ambitions, his 
labors, his perplexities or even to his joys. 
After fifteen or twenty minutes of such 
soothing occupation he may go back to his 
work, his brain re-poised, his little head¬ 
ache gone ; but, if he be a philosopher, he 
will remember that he cannot shave again 
that day. 

Another good thing which the custom of 


The Razor 


55 


shaving has given to the human race is the 
barber. If man had not wished to relieve 
himself of his beard, the profession of the 
barber could never have risen to import¬ 
ance. The mere dressing of wigs and cut¬ 
ting of hair and the curling of flowing 
locks would not have been sufficient to 
create the barber ; it was the constant de¬ 
mand upon his skill with the razor which 
gave him his place in the social system. 

In far back years, when he was a sur¬ 
geon as well as a shaver, the barber was 
an important man in the community, and 
took his place in literature and in art as 
one who had rights which could not be 
overlooked. His little shop was a sort of 
salon for the men of the neighborhood. 
Here was conversation, philosophy and 
gossip, with total freedom from the intru¬ 
sion of woman ; and here—in the middle 
ages at least—there was generally a viol 
or a lute, that those who waited might wait 
patiently and all might be content and 
cheery. 

The barber in fiction has many an im¬ 
portant place, and whether he be the barber 


56 


The Razor 


of the Arabian Nights, with his intermin¬ 
able stories of his five brothers, or the barber 
in Don Quixote, who assisted the curate in 
the critical expurgation of the Knight's 
library, or whether he be that famous 
“ Barber of Seville,” whose words and ac¬ 
tions have been wedded to the music of an 
opera, we find that the knight of the razor 
is often as worthy to be made a hero as the 
knight of the shield and spear. 

But we must not spend too much time 
with our razors ; there is work to be done 
in this world perhaps not so composing to 
our minds or so flattering to our vanity as 
the gentle act of shaving, but which life 
demands of us, and we must be up and 
at it. 



A GOOD DINNER 









A Good Dinner 

By John Alden 

ENTLE reader, listen ! I 
am not going to flood 
your ears with the oft 
narrated delights of John 
Chamberlin’s terrapin, or 
Charles Delmonico’s truf¬ 
fles. Of -such description you have had 
enough, and more than enough from better 
pens than mine. As a well-known clerical 
lecturer used to say, the pollen of fresh¬ 
ness is worn off by the attrition of appre¬ 
ciation and the friction of frequency. 
Besides, “The Duchess" andXaura Jean 
Libbey have preempted that field, and I 
have always been bashful in the presence 
of perfect ladies. Good wine needs no 
bush. Delmonico is above deprecation, 
and Chamberlin careless of criticism. 
Then, again, it has come into my mind that 



6o 


A Good Dinner 


the most fashionable of those who peruse 
this sketch dine ten times as often on roast 
beef as on terrapin and truffles. 

Therefore, forgive me if a humbler sort 
of gastronomy is forced upon your atten¬ 
tion here. I have always sympathized with 
Hawthorne’s custom-house officer who could 
smack his lips with hearty gusto over a 
dinner he had eaten forty years before. 
He must have been a healthy man, and a 
man who appreciated the sane and peace¬ 
ful pleasures of our higher civilization. 
He must have been able to distinguish be¬ 
tween a good dinner and a poor one. The 
memory of the senses is a good sort of 
memory to keep undulled by Time. Nor 
is adipose tissue a bad thing. Calvin, if he 
had been a fat man, would never have 
burned Servetus at the stake. Nero, Cali¬ 
gula, Loyola, and Lord Jeffreys were all 
thin men. Cruelty and corpulence are 
utterly incompatible. Dyspepsia has been 
the ever pregnant mother of diabolism 
since the world began. 

So much in justification of what I re¬ 
member. Hunger, you know, is the best 


A Good Dinner 


61 


sauce. And going back over your own life, I 
am sure you will be far more likely to recall 
those meals which you have approached with 
a good appetite than other meals of more 
elaborate preparation. So it is with me. 
The best dinner I ever ate was one which 
an epicure would have rejected, and which 
will bring a smile to your lips as I describe 
it. 

Fresh from college, I was earning a living 
for the first time. Money had always been 
a scarce article, though I had never gone 
hungry. Health and good digestion were 
mine. Of enthusiasm I had as much as a 
phlegmatic temperament will carry. My 
“job” was on a newspaper inside the 
limits of the present Greater New York. 
My pay was $6 per week. Not a princely 
income, to be sure, but as I look back on 
that period of my career, considerably 
more than I was worth. I had determined, 
as I still think, wisely, to live on that six 
dollars. You wonder how ? Of course ! 
You know nothing about such petty experi¬ 
ences. I hired a room over a corner gro¬ 
cery and next door to a theater. It was a 


62 


A Good Dinner 


hall bed-room. The rent was $1.50 a week. 
That left me $4.50 to spend on food. Well, 
youth is optimistic and improvident. Be¬ 
ginning Saturday night I ate with reason¬ 
able regularity till the money was gone. It 
would last till Wednesday night, or possi¬ 
bly Thursday morning. Then I fasted. 
The reporters had an extra allowance for 
car fare which was paid Fridays. It 
amounted in my case to 75 cents or $1 
a week. That meant a feast Friday 
night after the day’s work was done. It 
was an evening paper I was working on, 
and there were rarely any “ assignments” 
Friday evening. So I could eat and loaf, 
and invite my soul, for was not the next 
day Saturday and salary day to boot. 

The experience I am going to narrate 
demands a word in self defence. I was 
temperate. I had neither money nor en¬ 
ergy to waste in drinking places. I went 
into them to get news. I drank seltzer and 
raspberry when I had to be treated, or took 
a five-cent cigar—one like it would make 
me sick now ! The only ecstasy I enjoyed 
was the ecstasy of Swedenborg after he had 


A Good Dinner 


63 


heeded the warning of the angel not to eat 
so much. One does not have to be a saint 
to get into a morbidly impressible state of 
mind through continued fasting. 

The night before this famous dinner, the 
best I ever ate, viz., the most enjoyable ; I 
had been up till the small hours watching 
an interminable row in ward politics, a 
meeting which did not end till most of the 
German-American combatants were hors de 
combat, not from the assaults of their respect¬ 
ive adversaries, but from oceans of internal 
lager. This was entertaining but tiresome, 
especially as my college German seemed 
not to have included one-half of the terms 
used by the heated orators, and most of the 
excited discussion was, therefore, incompre¬ 
hensible. After four hours’ rest I had gone 
to the office to begin the most tiresome day 
I had yet passed through, a preliminary 
murder-trial examination in police court 
being its main feature. Altogether, I was 
very tired as well as very hungry when I 
got through work. Wandering alone up to 
the Maison Mura, an old hotel which boasted 
a fairly good restaurant at moderate prices, 


6 4 


A Good Dinner 


I strode in with the air of a prince or a 
millionaire, and sank lazily into a chair 
that was wide, and easy, and had a leathern 
cover that spoke of better days. Picking 
up a bill of fare, I began a mathematical 
calculation. The sum total of my available 
funds was 75 cents, since my carfare had 
been 85, and I must save 10 cents to start 
off on my rounds in the morning. “Corned 
Beef and Cabbage, 25 cents; Bread Pudding, 
to cents; Mashed Turnips, 10 cents ; Pot 
of Coffee, 15 cents ; Cream, extra, 5 cents ; 
Cigar, 10 cents." I could stand a full 
dinner. At that time I regarded the prac¬ 
tice of tipping waiters as reprehensibly 
demoralizing. 

The order was given and quickly served, 
though the wait seemed long to one who 
had been forty-eight hours without food. 
That corned beef and cabbage was ambrosia; 
the mashed turnips a glorious delicacy, the 
bread pudding a dream. The coffee was 
the most delicious of intoxicants. I ate, 
and ate, and ate, and sipped, and drank, 
and sipped, and drank again. It was nearly 
six o’clock in the afternoon. As I leaned 


A Good Dinner 


65 


back in my chair the red sunset light could 
be seen just to the right of an old ivy- 
covered stone church on a street corner 
opposite the Maison Mura. The sleepy 
old restaurant seemed dead. There was a 
rattle of wheels and horses’ hoofs on the 
cobblestone pavement, dying away, re¬ 
peated, and then dying away again. That 
setting sun had about it a 
dreamyirresistible potency. 

It was like the burnished 
shield of a desert warrior, 
like the fiery bush from 
which the Hebrew leader 
heard the voice of the Al¬ 
mighty; like the glittering 
veil of the Great Beyond, the Unknown, 
and the Unknowable. It charmed my eyes 
and did not blind them ; I gazed on it, 
how long I cannot tell, forgetting time, 
and space, and all things that belonged 
to the commonplaces of existence. 

* * * 

Out of that setting sun, that gleaming 
shield, that burning bush, that impenetrable 

5 



66 


A Good Dinner 


veil of the Great Beyond, came a face, and 
then a figure! 

Stately of form, alabaster as to feature, 
sensuous only in the fiery glow of her 
equipment, bearing the shield as an aegis 
upon her breast, waving as the bush of 
Horeb must have waved from side to side 
in the gentle breeze, speaking to me and to 
me alone of the Great Beyond, an idealized 
woman approached my hard fixed eyes. I 
saw her throwing red shadows on the dark 
green ivy of the church ; I felt her warm 
breath as she neared the open window. 
In an instant the figure stood before me, 
in the weakly lighted room where I could 
now see nothing else. Yes, there was the 
chiseled face, the helmet, the spear, and 
the long robe of Minerva, of Pallas Athena, 
the Goddess of Wisdom and of Art. Be¬ 
hind her, peeping out at times from the 
robe’s folds, with which they seemed to 
toy coquettishly, I could see two little 
imps whom Pluto must have loaned for 
the occasion. Their faces were malign 
and repulsive. Their twisted forms 
seemed innocent of clothing and of noth- 


A Good Dinner 67 

ing else. I shuddered. The Goddess 
spoke : 

“ Aye, Pallas Athena am I, the Patron of 
poets, and of schoolmasters, of artists and 
artisans, and of reporters, too. Thou art, 
oh young man, at the turning of the ways. 
I would do thee good. I am the Goddess 
of Intelligence, and of Work, the Work 
that knows no tiring, Ergon, the most 
blessed thing on earth. Thou hast been 
my devotee. Wilt thou make of the past 
a mere novitiate, and persevere to the end ? 
Truly my rewards are great, and worthy of 
thy highest nature.” 

Her tones were not loud, but deep ; not 
piercing, but musical. I murmured low : 

“ Then indeed, I shall be rich, or I shall 
be powerful, perhaps both !” 

Looking up into the face of the Goddess, 
I saw a sudden change. An expression of 
fierce contempt seemed to have been carved 
into the alabaster, by the instantaneous 
touch of a magic artist. She almost hissed: 

“ Then thou, thou too, art like the rest, 
like the paltry crowd of petty contemptible 
timeservers ! To thee, as to them, Work, 


68 


A Good Dinner 


my divine Work, is a means and not an 
end. Aye, be rich, if thou wilt; be power¬ 
ful, if thou wilt; what matters it to me? 
’Tis only one more hope gone wrong. Let 
the Olympians laugh, if they will! Am¬ 
bition, stand forth ! ” 

The imp at the right of Pallas revealed 
for the first time the range of his hideous¬ 
ness. He held out toward my trembling 
hand a bronze flask, labeled “Toxicon- 
Poison.” I shrank away. 

“ Nay, take and drink of it! Drink to 
the dregs of it!” the Goddess said, coldly. 
“I guarantee its virtue—no, its vice ! It 
will not fail thee. With that restless fluid 
in thy veins, thou wilt be powerful against 
all the world. Thou wilt be cruel, too, cruel 
and false to man and woman ; but what 
matters that to thee ! Drink, and drink 
deep !” 

“Take it away,” I cried, “and let the 
garcon of Gehenna go with it. Perhaps 
Wealth is better after all. Give me 
Wealth!” 

“Stand forth, Wealth,” the Goddess called 
aloud ; and the second imp appeared, less 


A Good Dinner 


69 


brawny than the other, but older; equally 
twisted of limb, and even more sinister of 
countenance. In his hand, too, was a bronze 
flask, marked, like the other, “ Toxicon- 
Poison.” 

“Wouldst thou have mines of gold, and 
dungeons full of precious stones ; wouldst 
thou eat of the fat of the land, and wear, 
every day, purple and fine linen ? Then 
bury thy lips, and steep thy throat in the 
liquor of that flask. Its power is never to 
be denied. Rich thou wilt be ; and men 
will court but neither fear nor honor thee. 
No friend shalt thou have, but flatterers in 
plenty; no sympathy about thee, but sim¬ 
pletons, till life becomes a burden.” Pallas 
Athena spoke with half repressed excite¬ 
ment. I nearly shrieked my answer. 

“ Let that black draught go to join the 
other, in the realm of Pluto, where it came 
from ! Let that imp go, and play with his 
fellow, in the brimstone piles of the nether 
world ! Majestic Minerva, I am thine ; 
henceforth and forever thine alone. Work 
is my destiny, and Work shall be my 
pleasure ! Hail ! Ergon, Hail ! ’Tis the 


70 


A Good Dinner 


doing of things that makes contentment ; 
the worth and not the wages of the work 
shall make me happy. Rewards? Yes, I 
shall have rewards ; such as the palterers 
never touch ; for shall I not ever recall thy 
face, oh Pallas Athena, thy face that smiles 
now into these two eyes of mine !” 

In fact, the Goddess was smiling, smiling 
as one who has gained a victory that was 
doubtful. 

“ Work on, work ever ! ” she cried, “and 
I, Pallas Athena, am alway with thee! Con¬ 
tentment shall be thy portion, and Content¬ 
ment is the one thing worth having for 
mortal man ! ” 

The segis seemed to grow dim. The form 
of the Goddess, in an instant, lost its out¬ 
line. The burning bush was ashes. The 
veil of the Great Beyond had disappeared, 
along with all it shrouded. The sun had 
set. The darkness of the church ivy was 
the darkness of the old graves over which 
it was planted. Yet, indeed, all things 
could not be quite as they had been ; for 
Minerva had spoken, and my life was ham¬ 
pered ; yes, hampered, as well as ennobled, 


A Good Dinner 


71 


by a vow not to be broken while that life 
should last. 

* * * 

There was a touch on my elbow. 

“ Check, sir,” said the waiter, respectfully. 
“ I didn’t want to disturb you before.” 

“Was I dozing, then? Yes, I must have 
fallen asleep over my coffee. I was very 
tired. Sorry if I have delayed things 
here.” 

“ Oh, don’t mention it ! ” answered Pat¬ 
rick, with a satirical grin. “We often have 
’em that way here. It’s as easy as pie, if 
they don’t show tremens; then we calls 
the police.” 

How could a student, fresh from a face- 
to-face interview with Minerva, smash the 
nose of a waiter whom he had not tipped ? 
I picked up my ten-cent cigar, lighted it, 
and headed for the door. 

“Walks straight ’nough, don’t he?” I 
heard the Great Unfeed whisper to the 
cashier. “Some of them young fellers never 
do get drunk in the legs.” 

The sequel ? Oh, yes ! I have kept my 
vow, and Minerva’s word has held good. I 


72 


A Good Dinner 


have loved honest work for itself. I have 
never been rich. I have never been power¬ 
ful. I have always been contented. The 
best dinner I ever ate was an eventful 
one 



BATH ROBES AND BACHELORS 




fi 


% . 
















Bath Robes and Bachelors 

By Arthur Brown 



THINK I am right in saying that 
one rarely, if ever, associates a 
bath-robe with a Benedict or, 
in fact, any kind of a married 
man. 

I have a score of married men 
friends, and among them all I 
only know one who wears the 
—robe. He puts it on every 

morning to receive the milk¬ 
man in at the basement door. That is all 
the use he ever makes of it—strange fancy. 

At other times he is either poring over 
a pipe or permitting his baby daughter to 
perform all sorts of feats on a wonderful 
irresistible shirt front, which can stand 
any kind of infant warfare. Sometimes 
he wanders seriously around a seven by 
nine garden, or is puttering over a queer 



76 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


shaped object he might call a kitchen shelf 
or a shoe box. 

But he is always at these times in his 
shirt sleeves. 

When it is not one of these times he sits 
martyr-like in a tight coat in the “parlor ” 
on one of those chairs built by the Society 
for the Promotion of Back-aches, On 
these occasions he is obliged to listen to the 
bright sayings of the children of other 
married folk—if not “ tales of woe ” con¬ 
cerning sassy, slovenly, impudent, domi¬ 
neering autocratic servants. “ She actu¬ 
ally ordered me out of the kitchen to-day.” 
“ Things have come to a pretty pass when ” 
—“ The trouble is we make too much of 
them.” “ That’s what I tell Jay.” “She 
told me I was no lady.” “ I don’t blame 
people for boarding.” 

Do you think, for a moment, brother 
bachelors, that the wife of this young man 
would permit him to make common use of 
his bath-robe ? Women know—and we 
know, when we are honest as to ourselves 
.—that men are all selfish—some women 
call us conceited and a lot of other names ; 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


77 


but these are the kind of women who have 
only met certain kind of actor and “yel¬ 
low newspaper heroes.” 

Admitting that we are selfish, however, 
what has that to do with a newly married 
man wearing this garment whenever he 
elects to do so ? 

I think I know—it’s jealousy. 

A bath-robe is a mighty comfortable ob¬ 
ject around the house. You can use it for 
so many things besides what it was in¬ 
tended for. 

If merchants who deal in these garments 
only realized this and would demonstrate 
their versatility in show windows what an 
increased sale they could make! Instead 
of bath-robes being tucked away in one 
corner of their store and sold as “ sundries,” 
they would require a department for them, 
and no—unmarried—man would dream of 
trying to live without one. 

In the first place, they are warm in cold 
weather, covering almost your entire anat¬ 
omy ; and cool in warm weather, when it 
isn’t necessary, in your room, to wear hardly 
any other clothing. If you are caught 


73 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


unawares, there you are, under your own 
vine and fig tree, perfectly proper—com¬ 
pletely dressed. 

In cold weather what a blessing they 
are ! Can a “ bug in a rug be more snug ?” 
You can wrap yourself within yourself— 
and the world is yours. Once settled com¬ 
fortably in your bath-robe, you seem to be 
protected by an armor that nothing can 
penetrate except what you want to receive. 
Your best thoughts, too, can be kept in¬ 
tact, no train of peaceful reflections or de¬ 
lightful musings can escape you. 

The beautiful flowing and graceful robes 
of the ancient Greeks and Romans find 
their best expression in the bath-robe of 
to-day. While it does not possess the 
poetical contour of the Roman toga, it is 
the only garment we now have which 
comes nearest the Roman idea, and, at the 
same time, combines the practical. 

One can store all sorts of household 
goods and trinkets in its capacious pockets. 
What a pleasure it is after you have settled 
yourself in your easy chair to find that at 
will you can reach down in your bath-robe 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


79 


pockets and pull a match, cigar or pipe, 
and even a book or magazine out of them ! 

But there are other uses for the robe 
which those who have not lived in it may 
not have discovered. A friend of mine, 
who lived in a cold hall bed-room, always 
utilized it for an extra cover on nights 
when his landlady’s “spreads” were either 
too light or too “ shy ” to keep him warm 
until morning. As he was a young man, 
given to making the best of everything, he 
accomplished two things by this happy ex¬ 
pedient—kept warm and found favor in 
his landlady’s eyes, of not being a“ kicker.” 

The poor fellow is now married. I have 
only seen him twice in two years. Once, 
just a week before the wedding, when he 
received me in his room, attired as of old 
—for our little symposium of pipes and 
philosophy—in a mouse colored bath-robe 
and low browed slippers. 

Just before I left him for the night, he 
remarked to me, in a curiously pathetic 
way : “ To-night I bid good-by to the old 
life forever ; and for the rest of the time, 
until I am married, will try to accustom 


8o 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


myself to the new order of things, which, 
sooner or later, I must accustom myself to. 
To-morrow morning I will consign my bath¬ 
robe and some relics of bachelordom to the 
tender mercies of the lady below stairs. I 
would give them to you, old fellow, but it 
would do you no good to be associated with 
the things that constantly bring up old 
memories.” 

From that moment he was not the same 
to me. He was looking forward to a new 
life ; /, to a continuance of the old, with¬ 
out hope, without ambition, save that which 
comes from the daily striving to possess that 
which puts one into a state of contentment or 
happiness, maybe, beyond the power of any 
one person or persons to disturb. 

“Selfish life ! ” you say. Yes, I admit it ; 
but only one form of selfishness, after all. 

He was married out-of-town, and I did 
not attend the ceremony. The last time I 
saw him he was in evening dress, in his own 
home. He was helping to entertain his 
wife’s “ set; ” but he was not the same care¬ 
less, good-natured fellow I once knew. I 
took him aside and asked him, quietly, if 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


81 


he had a bath-robe, now ? He replied : “ No ; 
that it wasn’t necessary, as his sleeping 
apartment led directly into his bath-room.” 
And so I left him. 

I remember my first bath-robe very viv¬ 
idly. It was a present from an old friend. 
A mixture of chocolate and light gray 
stripes, a rope girdle, and a little rope at 
the neck, with two frisky tassels at the end, 
—and you have a pen picture of it. 

We were friends from the beginning. I 
may have been a trifle vain in those days, 
for I recall several incidents where, upon 
wearing it out of place, my pride had a ter¬ 
rible thump. Once, I ventured to wear it at 
the boarding-house breakfast table. But it 
was only once. A prim old maiden lady, 
who thought nothing of wearing at the 
morning meal a loose wrapper, with a some¬ 
what low neck, from which was suspended 
a long gold chain that flowed to her waist, 
complained to the landlady, that she 
wouldn’t stay in the house if I continued to 
come to my meals in that “ vulgar gar¬ 
ment.” 

Fresh as I was at the time, I was wise 

6 


82 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


enough to retire to my cave under the roof 
and think it all over. It never happened 
again. 

I am more mellow now, and realize that 
important as the bath-robe is as a comfort- 
creator, it is not a garment for parading 
purposes. It can never play a decisive 
part in the making of history. It can never 
cut any great dramatic figure like Napo¬ 
leon’s chapeau , or the fatigue uniform of 
General Grant. 

If there ever was a garment typifying 
Peace, it is the bath-robe. 

I know some may dispute this, by refer¬ 
ring to the incident of the victorious pu¬ 
gilist, whom his attendant—after the fight 
—tenderly and gingerly, clothed in a 
red bath-robe. But this episode in itself 
shows how false any such reasoning is. It 
was after the battle when the pugilist don¬ 
ned his robe ; after the battle, when he had 
conquered and felt at that time particularly 
peaceful. 

There is no record to show what the de¬ 
feated pugilist wore, but, of course, it 
could never have been a real bath-robe. 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


83 


I have never seen any figure symbolical 
of Peace, but, for all that, can only think 
of her as the fourth sister to Faith, Hope 
and Charity. 

If that is so, she must be loosely gowned 
—a low-necked and short-sleeved effect, 
which, perhaps for photographic and deco¬ 
rative purposes, is less commonplace than 
the bath-robe. But it can never be a prac¬ 
tical, all-the-year-round garment, and at its 
best, would only be appropriate for a “ sum¬ 
mer girl.” And so we stick to our original 
proposition, for if it were a man who repre¬ 
sented Peace, he would be strictly in 
“ good form,” surrounded by the wooly 
covering. 

But to return to my first bath-robe. I 
know of no other inanimate thing that has 
eyer been in my possession I recall with 
more tender memories. We have been 
through fire and water and almost sudden 
death. The latter experience happened in 
San Antonio, Texas. It had been a beau¬ 
tiful moonlight night, and was a moonlight 
morning, when, unable to sleep, I arose 
about 1 o’clock, put on my bath-robe and 


8 4 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


took a short stroll on the hotel balcony 
just outside my room. 

I was feeling good, and lit a cigar. Ex¬ 
cept for the moon, which spread its radi¬ 
ance and forced its way over the tree tops 
right on the balcony, there was no other 
light to be seen anywhere. The rest of the 
hotel seemed to be a huge chunk in relief, 
raised out of the black night. But I didn’t 
care for that, and I was happy—until I 
heard a rifle shot fired, the ball whiz by 
my ear and bury itself in the window sill, 
just behind me ! 

My moonlight walk was suddenly cut 
short. I can’t recall all I did at the time 
—no one ever can, under such a high press¬ 
ure as that. I only know they picked me 
up pretty scared, and it was fully an hour 


before I was 
to have it 
It seems 
porter ” of 
gone into 
ing for cats, 
ing slowly up 
balcony. There 



in condition 
plained. 
Mexican “ night 
hotel, who had 
back yard hunt- 
spied me mov- 
and down the 
was no light in 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


85 


my room, or it would have been all right. 


As it was, my 


long-sleeved 
tending beyond 
collection of 
waist,combined 
iar moonlight 
a most ghastly 
know this is so, 
the“nightclerk” 




j - 7 — — /‘ r 

ropes at my IJr 
with the pecul- K 
effect, gave me ^ 


appearance (I 

for I tried it on jflJlfS 


afterward). 

The porter took me for & ghost, and fired 
away at me—and I did not blame him. 

There are other adventures I have had in 
connection with my bath-robe, but every 
bachelor who has made good use of his 
must have passed through some equally de¬ 
lightful and thrilling experiences. I leave 
the biography of mine at this point, hoping 
it will be the means of recalling other 
memories associated with a garment which 
should have a place in every bachelor’s ef¬ 
fects, close to the heart and on a hook 
where “moth and rust do not corrupt and 
thieves do not break through and steal.” 

One word more. I have tried to be 
cheerful all through this eulogy, so for- 





86 


Bath Robes and Bachelors 


give this pathetic picture with which I 
close. I looked out of the car window 
last fall, when traveling through a por¬ 
tion of the great corn belt of Illinois. 
There, in a field, I saw a scarecrow, made 
out of an old bath-robe ! It looked like the 
relic of the one my friend gave to his land¬ 
lady on his last night of single blessedness 
—but, whether it was or not, it was an un¬ 
worthy use to make of such a superior 
thing ; and I could not help exclaiming, 
with Shakespeare—“ To what base uses do 
we come at last.” 



THE CHAFING-DISH. 


























































































































































































































































The Chafing-Dish 

By William E. S. Fales 



HE latter part of the nineteenth 
century will be known to th ebon 
vivants of the future as the era 
of the Chafing-dish. This propo¬ 
sition will, of course, be denied 
by the fair artists who preside 
over the cooking-schools of the 
land and by the plutocratic 
gas kings, who compel luckless 
housekeepers to use gas stoves or else have 
their light cut off ; by aluminum manufact¬ 
urers, who believe that all culinary opera¬ 
tions should be performed in implements 
of that mysterious metal, and, above all, by 
the fanatical followers of the grape cure, 
the apple cure, the raw meat cure, the gra¬ 
ham bread horror, the oatmeal abomination, 
and the vegetarian fad. These people, 
and many of them are bright and worthy 



qo 


The Chafing-Dish 


members of the community, never realize 
that they are but pygmies alongside of the 
giant of the Chafing-dish. 

Civilization may be measured along culi¬ 
nary standards. The primitive man boiled 
water by throwing red hot stones into the 
family pot; the American Indian, both the 
aboriginal and the imitation article, smother 
delicate foods in steaming seaweed until 
flesh and fowl, fish and game, fruit and 
vegetable, taste exactly like the green sea 
moss which the lazy tides deposit upon the 
rocky New England beaches. 

There was a period of the open fireplace 
and of the box-like Dutch oven; there was 
a period of the frying-pan, the roasting-pot 
and the gridiron. The ice cream freezer 
will mark the first half of the nineteenth 
century ; the steam cooker will be used by 
unborn historians as a milestone on the road 
of human progress, but the leap of human¬ 
ity into the highest civilization will be 
symbolized by the Chafing-dish. 

I am told that there are people in this 
world who do not admire the Chafing-dish. 
I extend to them an infinite compassion 


The Chafing-Dish 


91 


and hope that their lines may at some time 
be thrown into more pleasant places. 

For had they met the Chafing-dish under 
right auspices., mark you not the best aus¬ 
pices, they would have loved that simple 
but immortal expression of human genius. 
And, ah ! if they had but met it under the best 
auspices, they would have reverenced it as 
the poor African reverences the family pot 
in which he boils his fiercest enemy. 

No one will ever appreciate the Chafing- 
dish with complete justice until he has seen 
one of the great masters throw poetry into 
gastronomic matter. The late John Cham¬ 
berlain, preparing a lobster k la Newburg, 
before a circle of awe stricken but loving 
friends, was a great epic in itself. To see 
Tom Murrey, king of the American cuisine, 
prepare a Welsh rabbit, is to confirm one's 
faith in humanity. To watch Dr. Edward 
Bedloe, the diplomat, wit, and scholar, of 
the Clover club of Philadelphia, convert a 
dozen round reed-birds into celestial gems 
is worth going across the Continent. To 
witness Major Moses P. Handy curry an 
oyster is simply a revelation. George C. 


92 


The Chafing-Dish 


Boldt, monarch of all that pertains to the 
inner man, handles a Chafing-dish with 
such consummate skill that Paderewski, in 
his wildest improvisations, Wilhelmj, exe¬ 
cuting a Hungarian rhapsody, or Ysaye, in¬ 
terpreting Vieuxtemps, seem but children 
alongside of him. 

Clarence Harvey, the poet, is a rare artist 
in this field, as is Henry Guy Carleton, the 
playwright. Ex-Governor William M. Bunn 
has distinguished himself by his culinary 
triumphs and is a close rival to that other 
famous gastronome and litterateur, Louis 
N. Megargee. The late Charles W. Brooke, 
orator and jurist, had a reputation second 
to none in Chafing-dish lore and science. 

The Chafing-dish is old and is new. There 
were Chafing-dishes far back in the palmy 
days of imperial Rome, but they were not 
the Chafing-dishes of to-day. Alas for the 
glory of the Latin capital, the Chafing-dish 
of the Caesars was a pan with holes in it, in 
which sometimes the food was held over the 
fire, and at other times burning charcoal 
was placed to keep a second dish warm. 

Even as late as the last century and the 


The Chafing-Dish 


93 


beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
Chafing-dish was of this double character. 
It did not even attain the dignity of the 
warming-pan. You catch glimpses of this 
savagery in the expression, rechauffte, which 
is a dish warmed over ; the middle syllable, 
“chauf,” meaning to heat, to warm, to 
warm over, is the first syllable in our word, 
Chafing-dish. 

The first great thinker who perceived 
the latent possibilities which lay concealed 
beneath the poor utensil of his time was 
Brillat Savarin, who recommended the use 
of a small, flat pan of thin metal, with a 
long handle, over the Chafing-dish of that 
period. This combination was the Chafing- 
dish of to-day in embryo. The next stage 
in its development was reached at about 
1855, when a pan, supported by a tripod, 
was held in position over a small spirit 
lamp. This was a Chafing-dish in the old 
sense of the word. It would keep a dish 
warm or would warm a cold dish, but as for 
cooking, it was of no earthly use, and as 
for artistic cooking, it was unworthy of 
notice. The modern Chafing-dish came into 


94 


The Chafing-Dish 


vogue immediately after the Civil War, at the 
time when different colleges and universities 
were establishing the schools of science, 
which are now so characteristic a feature 
of education. 

The Chafing-dish appears in the mar¬ 
ket in a hundred forms, but the model, the 
type, is a bronze or iron tripod, with a 
large upper horizontal ring, and a small 
lower horizontal ring, supported by the 
three legs. In the lower ring is a capacious 
alcohol lamp, with a cover so arranged 
that a large or a small flame can be had at 
pleasure. In the upper ring is a separable 
double pan, the upper fitting tightly into 
the lower and fitted in turn with a cover. 
The handles should be made of wood, or a 
metal drawn into a spiral, or helix, and 
should be as strong as the dish itself. 

Each pan should be a symmetrical curved 
surface, with a flat bottom, and without 
any angle, edge, or corner to prevent its 
being cleaned with a single movement of 
the hand. The king of all metals for cook¬ 
ing, so far as rapidity is concerned, is cop¬ 
per, but is tin in respect to purity and 


The Chafing-Dish 


95 


health. Copper, or tin-lined copper, may 
therefore be put in the first rank for the 
making of the Chafing-dish. Iron is ob¬ 
jectionable. At its best it is not pleasant 
to the eye, and even when treated with 
glazes so as to become agate ware, granite 
ware, porcelain ware, or granitoid, it falls 
short of the standards of other metals. 

Brass makes a very handsome utensil, 
and when well kept is pleasant to look upon. 
Aluminum is light, strong and clean, but 
there is always a haunting fear that the high 
temperature of the spirit flame may cause it 
to oxidize and become ruined. Our French 
cousins use aluminum bronze and find it a 
glorious success. It is as brilliant as gold, 
and tarnishes very slowly. Silver is ob¬ 
jectionable because it turns black with 
eggs, onions, horseradish, mustard, or any 
other food or food accessory containing 
sulphur. Gold is too heavy. Pewter, Brit- 
tania metal and German silver give good 
results, but show wear very speedily. 

Some shoddycrats have insulted the 
God of Cooking by making Chafing-dishes 
of chased silver, and even of repouss£. 


9 6 


The Chafing-Dish 


These are the people who would gild the 
golden rod, or put solitaire earrings upon 
the Venus di Milo. The only decoration 
to a Chafing-dish is the brilliant polish that 
comes from cleaning over and again. When 
you can see your face in it at every point ; 
when it reflects light across the room like 
a great jewel, then it is a work of art in¬ 
deed. 

Now, there is a profound reason for this 
rule. All good cooking tends to benefit 
health and to cure disease. It tends to 
increase good-fellowship and to drive away 
the blues. The surface of a Chafing-dish, 
inside or out, sideways or downwards, it 
matters not, reflects exactly like ridiculous 
Japanese mirrors, but always in a humor¬ 
ous and pleasant manner. The thin man 
becomes stout; the stout man a veritable 
Sir John Falstaff ; the wrinkles of care are 
transformed into those of laughter ; the 
scowl, the sneer and the frown are meta¬ 
morphosed into smiles. In this way the 
humble Chafing-dish becomes a ray of sun¬ 
light in the gloom. It is a spirit of good 
nature pervading the atmosphere. Hearts 


The Chafing-Dish 


97 


grow lighter ; jokes bubble up to the sur¬ 
face of consciousness ; wit flows fast and 
free, and kindness prevails. All of these 
things are conducive to appetite and di¬ 
gestion, and when good nature waits on 
appetite and digestion, health follows im¬ 
mediately behind in her footstep. 

In its humble attempt to enliven people, 
the dish should be assisted. The master 
of ceremonies, who is of course chairman 
by divine right, should aid by genial and 
generous conversation, and the convives 
should engage in friendly rivalry as to who 
shall be the most interesting or entertain¬ 
ing of the assemblage. 

While the Chafing-dish does wonder¬ 
ful work, that work is between narrow 
limits. It is not a kitchen range nor an 
old-fashioned fireplace. Its fire is fierce 
and hot enough to please the believers in 
the Tauist hell, but it is short lived and 
seldom lasts more than twenty-five minutes. 
The heat is intense, but small in quantity. 
It is therefore evident that the Chafing-dish 
cannot cook dishes which take a long time 
in their heating, nor dishes which contain a 


98 


The Chafing-Dish 


large bulk or weight of food. Only those 
things which can be cooked quickly, or 
which are improved by re-heating, can be 
employed in Chafing-dish science. I once 
saw a thoughtless amateur endeavor to bake 
large potatoes in this receptacle. He suc¬ 
ceeded in charring a part of the esculent, 
in making a prodigious smoke and smell 
and in nearly ruining his dish. But the 
potato remained almost unscathed. 

The Chafing-dish will boil. It will fry. 
It will steam. It will re-heat and above all 
it will cook sauces to perfection. At the 
same time it must be remembered that the 
rules which apply to the range must be 
modified to suit the new conditions. A 
piece of music written for a full orchestra 
must be changed materially for the xylo¬ 
phone. It is so with those formulas in or¬ 
dinary cooking which call for long periods 
of time and many separate pans and pipkins. 
The Chafing-dish is practically one pan. 
Even where both water-pan and working- 
pan are employed together, they are used 
jointly on the same principle exactly as 
a farina kettle. 


The Chafing-Dish 


99 


A charm of the Chafing-dish is the ease 
wherewith the heat can be regulated. 
If you care for curious little experiments it 
will enable you to do many which are very 
difficult with a stove or range. Thus, put 
water in both pans and turn the flame on 
half low, then with a small thermometer as 
guide, let the water in the working-pan 
reach a temperature of 165 degrees and 
into it break an egg. Raise the tempera¬ 
ture slowly to about 170 and hold it 
stationary. By degrees the yolk will 
harden and can be taken out a beautiful, 
golden circle, while the white remains un¬ 
changed. 

Another interesting experiment gives an 
insight into nature’s coloring secrets. Bring 
the water to boil in the water-pan and add 
a tablespoonful of boiled rice. Stir it to 
separate the grains and then pour in a half 
pint of common claret. Extinguish the 
flame and put the cover on. Let it stand 
fifteen minutes, take out half of the rice 
with a long-handled strainer and wash the 
grains quickly in cold water. They will be of 
a beautiful rose-pink color. Now add to the 


100 


The Chafing-Dish 


wine and water still hot four or five table¬ 
spoonfuls of lime-water and boil. The 
beautiful red changes as if by magic into 
exquisite green. This is chlorophyl, which 
nature employs in tinting the leaves of the 
forest. Again put out the flame, cover the 
pan, let it stand for ten or fifteen minutes, 
strain out the remaining rice and wash 
quickly in cold water or, better still, in salty 
water. The rice is of the color of a young 
apple in the orchard on the sunny side of a 
slope. Put the two portions together and 
add a third portion of uncolored rice and 
you have a combination of red, cream- 
white, and green, which for exquisite beauty 
cannot be surpassed. 

In starting your studies with the Chafing- 
dish use the simplest recipes. Snipe, for 
example, are capital things for the begin¬ 
ner. Buy the divine little birds from a first- 
class dealer and he will deliver them to 
you beautifully picked and cleaned. You 
can use them as they are, or you can cut 
off the lower legs and claws. If ladies are 
present at the session be sure to have it 
done before the birds are put upon the table. 


The Chafing-Dish 


IOI 


No one can tell why, but the tiny claws 
awaken pathos in woman’s heart, and so 
disturb the enjoyment of the feast. In 
your dish put a quarter of a pound of the 
best butter. When very hot, but not at the 
boiling point, put in your six snipe and 
sprinkle them with a little salt and cay¬ 
enne or paprika. Some authorities in¬ 
stead of this recommend rubbing the salt 
and pepper into the birds first. Put the 
cover on and allow them to cook from ten 
to fifteen minutes, according to their size. 
Extinguish the flame, let them stand five 
minutes more, serve them on a plate gar¬ 
nished with water-cresses or chicory 
leaves, and squeeze over them a little 
lemon juice. 

The same method may be applied to 
blackbirds, reed birds, rice birds, small 
trout and other creatures of about the 
same thickness. If larger ones be em¬ 
ployed, the outside will be properly cooked 
but the center will often be so underdone 
as to be repellant to a sensitive eater. 

Many birds, such as the blackbird and 
reed bird are improved by throwing over 


102 


The Chafing-Dish 


them in the dish one or two glasses of rich 
sherry, malaga, madeira or marsala, after 
the flame has been extinguished. The 
wine enhances the flavor of the meat and 
improves vastly the melted butter and 
juices of the bird which flow out during 
the cooking. Frog’s legs prepared in this 
manner are faultless. It is well, however, 
to stab the legs several times with a sharp 
steel fork, so that the sauce will make some 
entrance into the tissues. 

Another class of dainties which can be 
made with the Chafing-dish are the simple 
curries. Put in the working-pan a quar¬ 
ter of a pound of butter. Into this put a 
small onion finely minced. Heat until the 
onion becomes a pale golden color. Add 
a half teaspoonful of curry powder, or, 
better still, of curry paste. Stir it up 
thoroughly, let it cook a moment and then 
add a half pint of milk (or of consomme, 
or soup stock), salt, paprika, a half tea¬ 
spoonful of curry powder, three drops of 
garlic juice and thicken slightly with a lit¬ 
tle rice flour dissolved in cold water. This 
is the basis of the curry. It can be made 


The Chafing-Dish 


103 


hotter by adding more paprika, and a little 
powdered cloves. It can be made more 
aromatic by the addition of powdered car¬ 
damons and grated green ginger root, or 
can be made very mild by leaving out 
cayenne and paprika altogether. Into this 
sauce can be put hard boiled eggs, sliced 
lengthwise ; cold chicken or any other meat 
cut into small pieces not more than two 
inches long and an inch wide ; crab meat ; 
bits of boiled lobster ; sardines ; oysters ; 
scallops ; frog legs ; boiled snails, removed 
from the shells ; clams, shrimps, calves’ 
brains or sweetbreads. This sauce, or basis, 
goes equally well with fish, flesh or fowl. 
In serving it there should be as accom¬ 
paniment a great dish of boiled rice and a 
little dish of freshly grated cocoanutmeat. 
A very appetizing dish is made by using 
this sauce upon the fleshy parts of good 
old Scotch herring. Do not thicken too 
much or too little. If too much rice-flour, 
or flour, is employed, the sauce becomes 
pasty as it cools. If too little is used it 
is so thin that it will run everywhere. 
It should be thickened until it is the 


104 The Chafing-Dish 

consistency of old-fashioned molasses, or 
of cream. 

Best of all the products of the Chaf¬ 
ing-dish is the democratic Welsh rabbit. 
Into the pan put a tablespoonful of butter. 
When it melts, cause it to flow over all the 
interior, then add to it a pound of New York 
dairy cheese well grated. Stir as the cheese 
melts and add by degrees old ale or heavy¬ 
bodied beer, to keep the cheese at a proper 
consistency. The right allowance is a pint 
to a pound. Sprinkle a saltspoonful of 
salt into the dish and a small quantity of 
cayenne, paprika or Nepaul pepper to suit 
the taste. When smooth and cream-like, 
which it will be in about six minutes, ladle 
it out upon pieces of dry, hot toast on a hot 
plate. This is the simplest and best Welsh 
rabbit. Variations are made by adding a 
tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and 
a teaspoonful of English mustard. Another 
and a delicious variation is made by using 
four tablespoonfuls of Chinese soy in place 
of either salt or pepper. 

Still another is effected by employing 
Bass’s ale that has been opened and has a 


The Chafing-Dish 


105 


sourish tang. This indicates that the ale 
has begun an acetous fermentation, which 
if left undisturbed, will change the fluid to 
malt vinegar. It somewhat impairs the 
flavor of the rabbit, but does make it a trifle 
more digestible. The hot rabbit made by 
the late John D. Burke contained for 
seasoning salt, white pepper, cayenne, 
Worcestershire sauce, English mustard and 
horse-radish. It exerted a powerful stim¬ 
ulating influence upon the digestion. 

When your cooking is over, clean 
your dish with conscientious care. Use 
laundry soap, diluted lye or ammonia and 
water. Then polish it with any fine polish 
such as crocus, chalk, electro-silicon, or 
whiting. Finally, go over it with a rag 
slightly moistened with olive oil. 

If this be done regularly every particle of 
the surface will gleam like a mirror. In your 
lamp use alcohol, or what is just as good 
but cheaper, wood alcohol. Under no con¬ 
sideration use gasoline,naphtha,or kerosene. 
Some of the gas is bound to enter the food 
and to ruin it. 

Next to butter for cooking purposes 


io6 


The Chafing-Dish 


comes olive oil. Beef drippings are invalu¬ 
able in many compositions. Cottolene and 
Cotosuet are excellent and are enjoyed by 
most eaters, but are disliked by few. Lard 
is always good and tallow is always bad. 
Last of all, never let the pans run empty or 
dry during cooking. If they do, never 
attempt to put water or any form of grease 
upon the hot metal surface. If you do the 
water will turn to steam and will scald 
every one in the neighborhood, the oil will 
vaporize, carbonize and ignite. A Chafing- 
dish is a capital Christmas present, and like 
the coffee-mill in Eugene Wrayburn’s lodg¬ 
ing, is warranted to bring out all the domes¬ 
tic virtues. 








CIGARS. 








Cigars 

By A. B. Tucker 

(A knock at the door of the den.) 

ELL ! Well ! Will. How are you ? 
I don’t intrude on the sanctity of 
Sophomore singleness, do I ? 

“Sit down ! 

“Let me struggle out of this great 
coat and join the charmed circle. It’s 
snowing viciously ! 

“ But that fire, Will- 

“ I’m glad to meet you- 

“And you, sir- 

“ Happy to know any—all of Will’s 
friends. 

“ I am his father’s oldest chum,—a col¬ 
lege friendship it was, too. But life’s 
post-graduate hasn’t worn the edge away. 

“ Thank you, I will ! 

(Puff-Puff.) 



no 


Cigars 


“ I promised to look in on Will occasion¬ 
ally, you know ! Duluth’s a long way 
from Morningside Heights, and a line or 
two, now and then, to say I’ve seen the 
boy, I think, rather bolsters up the pater¬ 
nal—and maternal—heart. 

“ So don’t mind me at all! I'm going to 
sit here awhile and smoke some of your— 
very—good cigars, Will, and get away 
through the flakiness again. 

“ Where do you get them,—the cigars ? 

“Indeed ! my dealer, too. 

“ There’s a great deal of philosophy in 
cigar-buying. I know men who have 
changed their residence a dozen times in 
as many dozen months ; they have changed 
their tailors, their dining places, their daily 
papers, but they buy their cigars in just 
the same place as they did when I first 
knew them, and out of the same box, often. 
We choose our cigars and force our tastes 
as we do flowers in hot beds, rather than 
‘ fly to others that we know not of.’ 

“ There’s something friendly in the feel¬ 
ing of the smoke of your cigar (you always 
use the possessive when you talk of ‘ my 


Cigars 


hi 


cigar ’)as it filters through your mustache— 
seems to cling to your lips caressingly. It’s 
the escape of the prisoner’s pigeon, eager 
to be free,— sad to leave its whilom master. 
And it floats in circles above his head. It’s 
the real thing in halos. 

“ Staunch friend to those who treat it 
right,—is a cigar. But governed, Will, by 
the same universal laws as friendship, the 
world over. Nurse its fire and it is with 
you to the last. Neglect your cigar as your 
friend and you pay a penalty. Use it too 
freely and too selfishly and you will come 
to regret its existence,—friend and cigar, 
alike. Cigars are made for the brain. Cig¬ 
arettes for the impulses. Pipes for memory. 
Snuff for the olfactories, — and they re¬ 
ject it. 

“ They have been attacking tobacco for 
centuries. I haven’t the least doubt that 
there are anti-tobacco cliques among the 
Arapahoes and Assiniboines. But they 
were not the warriors, hunters and orators 
of the tribe. And you remember what a 
blizzard of criticism sturdy old Raleigh 
breasted. 


112 


Cigars 


“ Well, a cigar is a condensed pipe. You 
consume the shell just as a snake eats an 
egg, whole. 

“ But it’s more than that. There is evi¬ 
dence of an evolution toward the beautiful 
in the curve of its form. There’s a phi¬ 
losophy in its compactness, too. The better 
your cigar, Will, the closer it’s rolled,—the 
more perfect its draft. It smokes easily. 
So with a well trained and well-poised man. 
The better stuff there is in him, the more 
easily its results can be gotten out. That 
applies to placer mining, by the way. 

“ Don’t let me monopolize the conversa¬ 
tion ! Cigars are a lubricant for speech 
with me. 

“You’re very considerate, sir ! 

“ Do I know of their acting inversely ? 
Yes ; I remember many a case. I shall never 
forget when the Aquatic fought her terri¬ 
ble battle with Neptune. I was a passen¬ 
ger all but battened down in company with 
ashy faces and sobbing feminines. When 
it seemed as if the sea was trying to roll us 
over into vastness and leave us there, I 
dodged the fourth officer to the extent of 


Cigars 


113 

getting my head over the edge of the deck 
and saw, just for a moment, the Scotch 
skipper lashed to a hand-rail defending the 
vessel from assassination. They yanked 
me back in time to miss a nine-foot water- 
wall, but I have carried the picture of Cap¬ 
tain McDonald as he stood there like a 
headland, unmoved, watchful, calm, ever 
since ; and between his vise-like lips, was a 
cigar, lit and smoking. How he managed it 
in that spray-cloud, I could never conceive. 
But three days afterward, when the passen¬ 
gers were smoking on deck, I knew the 
difference between cigars in farce and in 
tragedy. 

“ I believe they are the badge of honesty. 
Cheats wear the badge, sometimes, just as 
they wear stolen masonic watch-charms. 
But I never heard of a murderer smoking 
while he committed a crime. 

“ Cigars are the companions of poets and 
traders alike. The painter uses their blue 
smoke to mix his colors, the inventor to 
materialize his dreams. They belong to all 
clubs, and are received into the best so¬ 
ciety. They help to protect you against 


Cigars 


114 


the contagion of plagues ; they smudge the 
mosquitoes away. They are with the anar¬ 
chist in his den, the Senator in his commit¬ 
tee-room, the clergyman in his study. But 
the convict cannot have them in his cell; 
he is expatriated and out-cast. They are 
the school-boy's ambition and the octo¬ 
genarian’s solace. They are as dear to the 
Caucasian as to the African. They recog¬ 
nize no colors, parties, 
creeds, nor fancies. They 
are international, unsec¬ 
tarian, altruistic. 

“ They are associated 
with the material and 
the poetic. Some of the 
daintiest verses extant have been sung in 
their praise, and the Lord knows how many 
have been penned under their coddling in¬ 
fluence. They have made their appearance on 
the modern stage and in the modern novel. 
They have well-nigh exhausted the versatil¬ 
ity of men in the naming of their brands. 
They have often befooled the custom-house 
officers, and to offset this, have paid enough 
in taxes to lift the debt of the country. 



Cigars 


115 

“ In warmer climes, I have seen them 
between the lips of dark-skinned beauties, 
and they were used not without a degree 
of grace and fitness. I have often thought 
that their rich, warm color resembled noth¬ 
ing so much as the shadowy beauty of a 
Senorita’s complexion under a semi-tropic 
sun. 

“ Some of my most pleasant memory- 
pictures center round the glow of a lighted 
cigar in the darkness. 

“ I stood once in a Missouri forest wait¬ 
ing for a man. He was ‘Jack’ McNally, 
ex-government scout, ex-secret service spy ; 
then a private detective. I was timber- 
buying along the line of what was at that 
time the Atlantic and Pacific railway. 
McNally was with me, ostensibly timber¬ 
buying, too. Really he was amassing in¬ 
formation about the train-bandits who man¬ 
aged the affairs of the railway in that sec¬ 
tion as per their own schedule. We had 
reached a little town near Springfield, I 
carrying more hundred dollar notes on my 
person than was altogether safe under the 
circumstances, and while we waited on the 


n 6 Cigars 

station platform, McNally took me aside 
in the darkness and said hurriedly : 

“‘They’re after us. I’ve been looking 
round a little and I find we are spotted. 
They know of your cash and my business, 
and if they get here before we leave, it 
won’t be healthy for either of us. 

“ ‘ This infernal train (he was more em¬ 
phatic) will not pull out in an hour, and 
then it’s likely to be held up. We must 
get out in some other way.’ 

“ I anxiously asked how. 

“We skulked under the shadow of the 
station and along the edge of the clearing 
to where the road opened Springfield- 
wards. 

“ ‘ Down there, about a quarter of a mile; 
wait by the side of the road for me,’ he 
said. ‘ I’m going to hire a rig. If we can 
get a half hour’s start, we’re all right.’ 

“ He left me and I went down the road. 
It was squeamish business. The outlaws 
knew these woods as they knew their Win¬ 
chesters. I spent the most nervous twenty- 
five minutes I have ever spent in my life. 
But it passed somehow. 


Cigars 


ii 7 


“ The moment when I heard the dry- 
creak of the harness and the crunch of 
twigs under wheels was scarcely less tense; 
it was an open question whether it was 
MeNally or a buckboard party of despera¬ 
does. My heart practiced gymnastics until 
I saw the glimmer of McNally’s cigar. No 
other man in that vicinity would have been 
smoking under these circumstances. But 
I knew McNally. I stood quietly until I 
smelled the familiar odor of his Havana, 
and then I called to him. Then his cheery 
‘ Hop aboard,’ reassured me and we put the 
livery nag through five hours of rough 
work, to find, when we reached Springfield, 
that Jack had been mistaken in that the 
road-agents were operating a hundred miles 
away. 

“ But the remembrance of that will-o’-the- 
wisp cigar-glow coming through the Japan¬ 
ned blackness- 

“ Well, it will not do to drift into story¬ 
telling, Will. There’s a little girl down 
town waiting for me- 

“ Come and see us. 

“ Bring your friends, too. Lydia lets me 




n8 


Cigars 


smoke in the sitting-room. She will pass 
you the box and the matches with her own 
fingers, and you may smoke and talk with us 
to your heart’s content. 

“In fact, she said, when I left, ‘Father, 
get Will’s promise,’ and I have. 

“ Help me on with the coat, boy, and I’m 
off through the snow. 

“ Good night to all !” 

(The door closes . Through the window a 
sturdy form may be seen struggling with the 
storm.) 



'iviv 


MY FIRST LATCH-KEY 























My First Latch-Key 

By Robert W. Criswell 

Y Editor asks me to write 
on “ My First Latch- 
Key,” and I recognize, 
at once, the tremendous 
importance of the sub¬ 
ject. My first latch-key 
was the turning point 
in my life. For fear the meaning of this 
may be too subtle for the ordinary under¬ 
standing, I will volunteer the clew that if a 
latch-key, or any old kind of key, is not a 
turning point, I would like to know what is. 

My first latch-key carries me back to the 
time when the roses were redder than they 
are now ; when the violet had a delicious 
fragrance which it has never had since ; 
when the grass was greener ; when the 
brooks and the birds sang a sweeter song ; 
when every swaying field of wheat was a 





122 


My First Latch-Key 


poem ; when the autumn foliage had a glory 
never seen on earth before or since ; when 
every sunset was pure gold and living fire ; 
when every star was a diamond ; when the 
moon’s chaste beams made every youth a 
poet; when the night was filled with 
music ; when, with Her to live and strive 
for, it would be but a few golden years 
until I would be a Czar and own an Em¬ 
pire. 

I did not care particularly about the Em¬ 
pire on my own account. As a matter of 
fact, I had no selfish thought in that regard 
at all. I set absolutely no value upon all 
the empires of the earth except in so far as 
She might have a wish to be the mistress 
of them. 

That was the exact condition of affairs 
when I became the possessor of my first 
latch-key. The face of nature is precisely 
as I have here set forth, and I have not 
heightened the color of the general outlook 
as much as a single tint, even to the em¬ 
pire. 

If this is to be a true story to the end, as 
it is in the beginning, I may as well admit 


Vy First Latch-Key 


123 


here that there hare been some hitches and 
some disappointments in the development 
of the grand scheme. 

In the hrst place, I lost my dog. That 
was a blow. I liked the dog on his own 
acconnt and on general principles; bat 
there were other considerations that at¬ 
tached me to him with hooks of steel. 
When he could not find me he wonld go and 
iie on Her front stoop and She liked him for 
his great discernment. Two or three times I 
saw Her take his head between Her hands, 
look affectionately into his eyes and call 
him pretty names. She was fond of him, 
and, therefore, I treated him with great 
respect and would not have parted with 
him for a kingdom. In fact, after She had 
caressed him I looked upon my dog with 
something akin to reverence, and thought 
seriously of some day following the example 
of Cesar as to his horse, and making him 
Consul. One might have supposed that 
having had Her hands upon him he would 
have had a talisman!c charm which would 
have brought him safely through every 
stress of storm and weather and every peril 


124 


My First Latch-Key 


whatsoever. Strange and horrible as it may 
seem,when this almost immortal canine neg¬ 
lected to clear the track fora flying express 
train his valuable life was snuffed out with 
as little delay as if he had never been in Her 
presence or felt the magic touch of Her 
hand. 

When the ancient Egyptians lost a dog 
they used to shave their heads and bury 
the remains of the beloved animal in sacred 
ground. I thought I could do no less than 
that, but finally was persuaded to retain my 
youthful locks and give my dog a decent 
burial back of the barn, and let it go at 
that. 

There have been a few other disappoint¬ 
ments in addition to the above sorrowful 
affair. Several difficulties at different times 
have interposed themselves between me 
and the Empire. Two or three times I had 
it as good as won,—as it seemed to me 
then—but something or other went askew; 
the enterprise turned out to be not exactly 
as it looked at the beginning and the stock 
never reached the high value in the com¬ 
mercial world that was expected of it; the 


My First Latch-Key 


125 


gold did not “ pan out ” as much as it should, 
and Golconda was always in the next 
county. 

But She has said a thousand times that 
the Empire never entered into Her calcula¬ 
tions, partly because She is too good a 
republican to care for one, even if it were 
spread under Her feet. At the same time 
I am still working quietly in that direction, 
and when it is achieved we will keep it “on 
the side,” as it were. 

As for the first latch-key, insignificant 
and insensate piece of metal that it is, the 
memories which it sends trooping would 
fill a book. 




















SOME WATCHES I HAVE KNOWN 






















































































































































Some Watches I Have Known 

By Ernest Jarrold 


HE first watch I ever owned was 
given to me by my Irish nurse, 
Ellen Riley, as a Christmas pres¬ 
ent. It cost only $1.50, and it 
required nearly ten minutes’ 
time to wind it each night be¬ 
fore it was placed beneath my 
pillow. I can dimly remember 
handling it with as much care 



as if the cheap case contained a Jurgensen 
movement, worth $300, full jeweled, and set 
with diamonds. My nurse was very poor. 
As I look back through the intervening 
years, I can realize the sacrifice she made 
to give happiness to'me. The story of 
how the watch was secured was told to me 
by my mother in later years, when the stern 
realities of life had robbed faith of much of 
its glory, and sentiment had vanished like 
the beauty of an autumn sunset. 


9 



130 


Some Watches I Have Known 


My mother told me how anxiously Ellen, 
the nurse, looked forward to the coming of 
Christmas—when I was in my tenth year. 
She was a faithful, loyal soul, who clung to 
the uneven fortunes of our family until her 
message came from the eternities. At the 
time to which I allude, Ellen was very poor. 
The claims of a decrepit mother were so 
great that she could not spare a cent from 
her frugal earnings. There was a super¬ 
stition among the Irish folk of the locality 
where my father lived, that goat’s milk 
was a sovereign remedy for nearly all the 
ills to which humanity is heir. It happened 
that Ellen was the owner of a prolific nanny- 
goat. Ellen had been turning over in her 
mind for several weeks the problem of how 
to procure the money to buy the watch she 
had set her heart upon, and had about 
given up in despair, when the possibility of 
turning the goat’s milk to account occurred 
to her. But who would buy the goat’s 
milk ? This caused her much anxious 
thought, until she mentioned the matter to 
Mrs. Williams, the wealthy widow, for whom 
she did an odd job at sewing nowand then. 


Some Watches I Have Known 131 

Now, Mrs. Williams disliked goat’s milk as 
the devil hates holy water. She would not 
have drunk a pint of the milk, unless it was 
to save her life. But when Ellen told her 
of the yearning which she possessed, to 
make me a present of a watch, with that fine 
perception and gracious deceit of which 
women only are capable, she said she had 
been wondering for a long while where she 
could procure some goat’s milk ! It was 
such a remarkably refreshing and strength¬ 
ening fluid, she said. She added, with ad¬ 
mirably simulated sincerity, that she feared 
Ellen could not furnish it to her fresh. To 
this, Ellen replied that she milked the 
nanny every day, “with her own two 
hands,” and she could bring it to Mrs. 
Williams warm from the milking, before the 
cream had a chance to gather on the top. 

And so the compact was made. It was a 
situation of extreme delicacy which Mrs. 
Williams passed through when Ellen brought 
the first pint of milk to her ; and after the 
happy Ellen had gone, the widow threw the 
milk out of the window. Gradually, the 
store in Ellen’s woolen savings bank was 


132 


Some Watches I Have Known 


increased. My mother has often related to 
me, her sweet eyes dimmed with tears at 
the recollection, how Ellen would get out 
of bed in the middle of the night, light a 
candle and sit in the kitchen to count, with 
ever increasing satisfaction, the hoarded 
money, while her face beamed with rare 
delight because of the joy she intended 
to confer upon me. Waking or sleeping, 
the idea of the watch never left her mind. 
Her face continually wore a broad grin, and 
she was so mysterious that the other serv¬ 
ants suspected her of having lost her mind. 
Her anticipation was continually whetted 
by frequent visits to the jeweler’s window. 
Here she would stand for half an hour at a 
time, looking at the watch which she in¬ 
tended to buy. It lay swathed in cotton, in 
a green paper box in the window, the only 
plebeian timepiece in the collection, sur¬ 
rounded by gleaming diamonds and spark¬ 
ling rubies. 

How slowly the days dragged by to 
Ellen ! With what exceeding deliberation 
did the sun go down each evening behind 
the hills! And when the eventful day 


Some Watches I Have Known 133 

arrived, and the last pennies were added 
to her savings, how her heart beat as she 
hurried down to the jeweler’s and poured 
out upon the glass case her precious store! 
Her hands trembled as with the palsy when 
the jeweler placed the watch in her palms. 
Then she cautioned him to say nothing 
about the purchase, as it was a surprise for 
a little boy of whom she was very fond ! 

Dear Ellen, with the wrinkled hands ! 
Surely you must have watched the dawning 
of many an ineffable day in the calm land, 
if there is any immortal virtue in such love 
as thine ! 

The jeweler drew his handkerchief from 
his pocket with unwonted quickness as he 
followed Ellen to the door and watched 
her run with eager steps up the street. At 
twelve o’clock that night Ellen sat before 
the kitchen fire wrapped in a shawl. In 
her lap lay the watch which she had bright¬ 
ened with a piece of cloth until it shone 
like a new milk-pan. Having no money to 
purchase a chain, she had tied a shoe-string 
to the ring of the watch. With bated 
breath and stealthy footsteps she climbed 


134 


Some Watches I Have Known 


the creaking staircase, stopping on every 
step like a burglar, and went into my room. 
With infinite care and tenderness she slid 
the watch under my pillow and listened 
with beating heart at the door to assure 
herself that she had not awakened me. 
Then she went to bed and dreamed all 
night about watches with hands countless 
feet long. 

At five o’clock the next morning I awoke 
with a yawn. In the stillness I detected a 
faint sound. At first I thought it was an 
insect in the wall. But the sound was so 
regular and constant that I lifted the pillow 
and saw the watch. A prouder boy never 
strutted on the face of this old planet than 
I as I tied the shoe-lace to my buttonhole, 
dropped the watch into my waistcoat pocket 
and went out on the back stoop to regulate 
St. Mary’s clock and the rising sun. The 
cupidity of all my boy friends was awakened 
soon after my appearance, and a dozen 
of them stood by while I pried open the 
back of the case with an old jack-knife in 
order to show them the little wheels inside. 
Ellen was late in coming down-stairs that 


Some Watches I Have Known 


135 


morning, but there was a sly suggestive¬ 
ness in the way she asked me what the 
time was that went far toward convincing 
me that she knew more than she was will¬ 
ing to confess. 

But, alas! The watch has gone the way 
of all watches ! By the way, what becomes 
of all the watches? When the tiny wheels 
become worn out, to what unknown Pot¬ 
ters Field are they consigned ! 

Father Time, merciless in his progress, 
and merciful in his oblivion, has left his 
impress upon me since Ellen gave me my 
first watch. I have had many watches 
since that time, but not one which has left 
a more lasting impression upon my mind. 

An open-faced, full jeweled, beautiful 
gold watch was presented to me only a year 
ago by a little Bohemian club of which I 
was the toastmaster. I shall never forget 
the night the presentation was made. How 
the thing glittered in the gaslight, as the 
President of the club held it out toward 
me ! I think my hands must have trem¬ 
bled as did Ellen’s so many years before 
when she received the cheap toy from the 


136 


Some Watches I Have Known 


hands of the jeweler. I can see the bright 
faces of the men who had contributed 
toward the watch in fancy mow and recall 
their hearty congratulations. It suggests 
the time when I pried the back of the $1.50 
watch open to show the boys the little 
wheels. Of course I had to make a 
speech. How I got through I never knew. 
I remember, however, that I told “ the 
boys ” the watch should never be disgraced 
by falling into the hands of the pawnbroker. 
But necessity is sometimes stronger than 
sentiment. The truth is that pawnbrokers 
are not the curse they are frequently said 
to be ; and (tell it softly !) when I want to 
learn the time to-day I am forced to visit 
“ my uncle.” 









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